The first step in any journey is often taken long before it formally begins. For me it usually starts with memories of past journeys---the time in England when I got lost on the morning of my son's wedding, the panic I experienced in Paris, when I nearly missed meeting up with a school-friend, because of misunderstood French instructions, the day all planes in London were grounded by a terrorist threat and I was stranded in Crete with my English grand-children, those happy days in Pakistan, before it descended into its current fragile state and all those moments in far-off parts of the northern hemisphere that have given me a sense of home-away-from-home.
Tomorrow I am off again on a journey to see my grandchildren in England. Which means, of course, a long flight.
Suspended here in coma land
that life itself seems left behind
time has me trapped, inert, confused
in dimmed half light in shadow landand all around the strangers flit
they come and go, unknown, unreal
they make me eat, they do their rounds
a kind of hour glass they become
they mark the time like silent sand.
For here time’s dressed in strange new garb
For here time’s dressed in strange new garb
which does not fit its normal frame
it is not day, it is not night
not what’s below, not what’s behind,
not yet the time of when we land.
it is not day, it is not night
not what’s below, not what’s behind,
not yet the time of when we land.
So far above each travelled land
time cannot be the way it was
before my zones of numbed existence
were crossed to meet my children’s children.
The price I pay to hold their hand.
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