Father from the Air
by K. E. Duffin
The plane banks sharply after takeoff,
cloud sutures floating on faded blue,
riverine squiggles feeding a silver trough,
mirrored pools, woodlands scissored through.
Wisps of cirrus fly backward. Summer again,
but which one? Before or after you?
Two halves of a puzzle yearning for when
every distance had a simple solution
in a hoped-for and then.
In your everywhere ocean
waves, like runners caught
mid-stride, have lost their motion,
meaningless as should and ought.
A line of puffball cumulus tapers
to an unmarked there. I thought
of you among thundering breakers,
surfcasting forever, as I sprint
across wet sand toward you, acres
of empty sky above, the glint
of the cast line snapping back,
sea flooding each footprint,
erasing my rippled track
the way you were erased, though you still stand
with muscled calves in the swirling milk and wrack
as a nacreous shell of sky and sand,
hinged at the horizon, closes like a hand.
Copyright © 2017 by K. E. Duffin.