TOWARD MADRID
Push the kids into a dim sleep
as fusty and impure as a transatlantic
jetliner barely winging its way away
from the coast of Nova Scotia.
They are temporary beings—
small for now, quiet for a minute.
When the people emerge—the workers
and the wives, the pharmacists and
fathers—time slows down, and there
they are, stretching something fake
into the fib of permanence.
It is not important. The adults,
for now, wake and guide them
up the jetway, into customs
of their countries, or even of the country
they just departed. And though no one
ever goes back there, even the simple shape
of a street or the sky stays with us.
Even for a million years,
if a child would ever live that long.
published in Meniscus, Vol 5. Issue 2, 2017
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