Clouds slip by
A constant conveyor belt of textured fluff
Mostly the regular texture of old imprinted wallpaper stretched tight
With the odd area resembling something or another
Here is a duck head
Over there a castle tower
A nearby left handed guitar attacking the gates
With rock and roll
Forehead pressed to the window
I watch the seemingly solid vapor landscape pass me by
Quicker than it did in my youth
From my favorite seat
On the old orange couch
Close up to the picture window
By the lake
As the sun proceeds lower in the sky
Interesting shadows and textures arise
To grasp at the threads of imagination
Fluttering along at full speculative speed
Brightening to make an impression upon the neurons before they pass by
When the light is practically parallel to the line of clouds
My heart jumps into my throat
The most beautiful colors come true
Oranges yellows purples permeating the heavens
Even a tiny rainbow amidst some stray mist
Unbearably breathtaking imagery such as that
Can only exist for moments at a time
As a rule
And following through on that promise
The sun drops below the clouds
Leaving me alone in a twilight lit from reflected light above
Along with this old airplane
And her crew
Everything creaks as the first stars appear to me
The wing spars flex in a long curve from root to tip
As a slight updraft makes the autopilot do some work
Computing how best to manipulate the flight controls
To keep us at our assigned altitude
Give or take a couple hundred feet
The temperature inside hasn't changed
But I feel a chill inspired by the chilly view
So I pull the old smelly Pan Am blanket a little higher
A little tighter up to my chin
Smelling of a thousand bad in-flight meals
And a hint of pipe tobacco
Out the window the clouds show their first gap in a thousand miles
And the rolling textured surface of the Pacific Ocean peeks up at me
Then it is gone
And I'm trapped once again above those clouds
Now dark grey and slightly menacing
As the world outside the window dims
And the twinkling heavens open their arms wide
