by Mark Halliday
Nobody seemed to notice me for three days in San Diego
as if I were less significant than a spindly palm tree
yet when my plane took off from the airport
at that moment all over San Diego people paused
and glanced into some crystal of absence;
the plane’s wheels lifted unequivocally from the runway
and San Diego was left with a diminished portion of the possible
and in particular several thousand quite healthy women
in their twenties and thirties (okay and early forties)
felt a sudden shiver and fearfully touched their hair
as my plane rose sternly into the blue
of the tremendous Unavailable, so gone and so debonair.
-from Keep this Forever