Flight Discrepancy
April 7, 2013The man in the plane thinks he won’t come back this time. Won’t ever come down. Will not allow the landing wheels to touch the earth again. Will never land….
The man in the plane thinks
he won’t come back this time.
Won’t ever come down.
Will not allow the landing wheels
to touch the earth again.
Will never land.
High enough to see what takes place
below, he has the definite feeling
that he will not return.
Should not go back.
That he doesn’t belong there,
but rather up here and endless.
What appears to be, from down there,
cloudless and blue, he sees as a vastness
of nothing he understands.
Immersed in the purity of thought,
time itself becomes a sky of everything.
Invisible and silent. Never land.
—Stephen R. Roberts (Hamilton County)
Stephen R. Roberts was born and raised in Noblesville. His work has appeared in Rain City Review, Sulphur River Review, Blackwater, Black River Review, Talking River, WaterStone, Riverrun, Connecticut River Review, and, to get away from all the moisture, Dry Creek Review. He has five published chapbooks, and his first full-length collection, Almost Music From Between Places, was published by Chatter House Press in 2012.
Indiana Humanities is posting a poem a day from Indiana poets in celebration of National Poetry Month.