prompt 15 hour 15 – air travel
Flying it is
I was used to Greyhounds
and the excitement of never knowing
who would share the next seat for
hours and hours of trips to places I was only half committed to go.
Planes mean business –
there is no half-commitment to journey by air:
you are there for good
without wings,
like Icarus after the fall
(all broken wax and wasted feathers).
Greyhounds can’t cross oceans,
even if they could swim that far
without being eaten by sharks.
Flying is safer than swimming –
all or nothing
in the endeavour to get somewhere better than here…
wherever here is.
Greyhounds never made me feel adventurous,
just resigned
to everything I was running to/from/around.
Flying it is.
© r. l. elke
I like the idea of bus travel being only half commitment in this poem…the idea is lurking under these lines that you could get off the bus at any stop, but you can’t do that on the plane…total commitment…I love that sentiment in here…
Sandy, thank you so much for taking the time to look at my poems. I am grateful for the kind feedback.
This is wonderful! Trans-formative and detail orientated.
I love particularly
“there is no half-commitment to journey by air:
you are there for good
without wings,
like Icarus after the fall
(all broken wax and wasted feathers).”
thank you. all i could think about was how fancy i felt on my first plane ride when i was 16 on my way to Germany. i took greyhounds all of the time and it was so…i don’t know…trashy. and really scary for a teenage girl in the 80s to travel alone, too.