Elaine Sexton

The film star drops out of the sky
when his prop plane loses an engine,
Tupac is shot, and his body
guard, too. Both items are news
you hear as you wait on hold
on the phone in the office.The radio
broadcasts a mixture of sun & clouds
you can't see without windows.
The West Side Drive is backed up
for miles, a twenty minute delay
expected, outbound
at the Williamsburgh Bridge
and the Mid-Town Tunnel. Today
you rummage in your desk for an aspirin,
while the call you made makes you wait.
You draw small crafts in the margin
of a yellow pad, and forget who it is
you have called. Boats with outboard
engines, a float plane with its single propeller,
coast on a Pilot pen's ink, little black swells
form to a tune by Vivaldi who replaces
the news. A willow tree drops its weeping
leaves down one side of the page, and by now
you've left the building, the city.
The letters and phone have become
props in a stage for departure. How many
wings will it take to lift you, intact, over
the side of your cube by the mail room?
Every day deliveries come and go. Express,
Overnight, Second Day, Same Day. One day
a courier asks you which way is out,
and you follow the directions you gave him.

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© Elaine Sexton 2000. Used with permission of the author.