My Poem ‘Coffee and Clouds’

On an early-morning flight-
just as the sun rises in the sky
and brings alive the clouds
like a wave of fire frozen in time,
like a magical world being expressed
by someone’s incredible and inspired imagination-
a man looks out his window
and simply cannot believe what he is seeing.
He cannot think, he cannot move,
he just knows that he is here for a reason.
He is sitting in his chair on a plane flying 500mph,
in the atmosphere of a planet spinning 1000mph,
with a heart in his chest beating like an unrested drum.
The man isn’t going far,
but to him every flight is like a trip to the moon.
Even as he watches the electric blue
and serene open air above the clouds,
the man swears for a moment
that he sees shooting-stars descend and streak
from above to below in short sucession-
not a trick of the light,
or momentary bursts from the sun-
actual asteroids and meteors from another world
choosing now to reign down from the heavens,
to fall into view and end their billion-year journey
right in front of him.

As the man takes a sip of hot coffee
he wonders for a second how the cup came into his hand,
who handed it to him, how unearthly and incredible the coffee tastes,
if he looked away from the window,
because he doesn’t remember when or for how long.
As the hot coffee rests in his mouth for a second
and then rushes down his throat,
the view outside the window, outside the plane,
intensifies within the blink of an eye,
and the man feels like the plane and his fellow passengers
are suddenly flying on the airplanes wings-
fixed in position, but able to be swept on their journey
by the breeze on their face and through their hair,
and by the feeling of unbelievable freedom.
It isn’t until the plane hits a slight patch of turbulence
that the man regains his faculties and his focus
and remembers where he is.

The air is different up here.
Everything you feel, think, and experience,
while free of gravity, goes straight to your head,
in ways only an astronaut could reciprocate,
or someone who finds love and happiness
for the first time in their life.

The man sleeps.
While still believing he is still awake,
while believing that he has been awake for the entire flight,
forgetting the brief conversation that he had with a passenger
who mistook him for a celebrity
while making their way back from the bathroom.
The man wakes.
The man feels more refreshed than he has done in years.
The man feels like he has been looking out the window
for what seemed like seconds,
before the announcement rang-out
and the “fasten your seat-belts” sign became illuminated
indicating that he and the plane were descending to there destination.

What does it all mean? The man asked himself,
as they passed though the clouds.
Everything means something, he repeated to himself,
from the stirred coffee in your cup that swirls
and resembles the spiral of a galaxy,
to the beautiful shapes and colours that you discover
while you’re among the clouds.

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