WATCHLESS FLIGHT

The flight to San Francisco from Hongkong
Takes fourteen hours, creates a sense of hovering
In empty air, maybe adrift, discovering
Insulated animation, long

Enough for fundamental bewilderment.
And adding to the unreality
My watch stops. I’m more and more at sea.
Calendar days redouble or vanish. The referents

Of time are loosened. I’m five miles above
The Pacific, or maybe five miles below.
Where or when I am I hardly know.
Who can grasp the truth of life and love,

Hurtling eastward, cocooned in a shooting star,
When deep inside you doubt just who you are!

(53, September 10, 1992)

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