Diana Smith Bolton

A President Says Goodbye to Air Force One

You, I might miss the most, with your abalone
hulls and coffee pot. Briefing in the clouds,
the pressure-regulating earplugs twist diplomacy
into feathers and precipitation. In you, my spouse
 
shone; my shadow did not play across her hair
when we ascended together. Cabin pressure
thinned terrestrial pressures; the recycled air
swam in my lungs. Earth, here, had no tether,
 
nothing stronger than the unfelt cresting
of the jet stream. The blue beyond white befriends
all within curved walls, behind curved desk,
flying a curving trajectory.  But now I descend,
 
a drooping duck, back to the mud and mundanity.
In dreams, I no longer fall, but fly.
 
 
 
--
Diana Smith Bolton is the founding editor of District Lit, an online journal of fiction, poetry, and visual art. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, anderbo, Magic Lantern Review, elimae, Cartography from Imagination & Place Press, and elsewhere. She lives in northern Virginia.