The View From Seat 4-A

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