Karen Paul Holmes

Stairway to Heaven beams through headphones,
and I almost sing out, “I look to the west”
but recall the ear-bud guy at the gym unaware
of how loudly he crooned and out of tune.
Sunset, synched with Led Zeppelin,
brushes its pigments in time-lapse.

As a kid, I hoped flying among sun-limned clouds
would be akin to sitting in a bubble bath.
If the window opened, one could scoop
mountainous handfuls, blow them, toss them up.
But the plane entered gray nothingness,
disappointing mist forming on glass.

Now cabin lights dim: Clatter and murmurs stop.
Joni Mitchell’s silk voice likens Amelia’s flight
to the wax-melt disaster of Icarus.
How the sea, trees, and geometric fields
must have grown in an astonished second.
How Joni crashed into another wrong man’s arms.

The stranger’s curly head drops onto my shoulder –
so oddly intimate and innocent, I almost hate
to disturb him. Dots of stars pinpoint the aisle,
and I see this jet as an electron – space inside space,
black inside black (perhaps a metaphor for our existence
on one plane or another) – making a blind beeline
through the night, an inch or an eternity from land.