Being Left Behind


Being left
behind when
your loved ones fly away,
travelling to places you’d like to be
and in their company
each step you make afterwards
is useless,
remembering the finality as those wide doors
shut you
on the wrong side.

The duty free shops have no attraction then
and along the airless airport malls
you bounce on sweep-worn sheen,
an alien among greyer aliens.

The outrageous price of the monopoly-run
car park grinds your pocket in your teeth
and, as you yearn unrequited, not now
for the noble, but for any exit
through those bilaw-hoops of grey ups and downs
that rise nowhere, you loose all sense of direction,
and only happen across the way again
in regret by remembering true north
which was the way
the flight out went.

so as you approach the first lit
intersection, you can’t decide
which way you want to go
indecision cripples you, your
accelerator foot looses its strength,
you dawdle off into the left lane
paused between non-take-offs
in non-acceptance of this
spirit-grounding

Then, you realize
that a rapture has happened
and you weren’t in it

And that, for your departed,
the universe is much increased
while for you the dome has shrunk
the walls are closing in, the grey roof’s
come down

your evening is yawning open
your tomorrow is a pedestrian repetition
of the mundane again,
your steps are leaden with the dull
ache of regretting that one step
you did not take

and this is hell.


29 March 2006 © Wayne David Knoll