IT WAS A NIGHT WHEN FLIGHT HADN'T YET BEEN INVENTED

He had a face
like a FOR SALE

sign that
had been there for ever

with the kind of moustache
that smart-aleck kids

would draw upon
a poster of the Mona Lisa.

His eyes were kind - Dalí-ish
as when the great painter

announced his
own greatness.

Behind him
a yellow half-moon

posed
perched upon his head

as if it was his
own peculiar particular pet

otherwise he was
nondescript

a no-one
that no one would notice.

An announcement announced
that the flight to Dublin

would be delayed
indefinitely.

Outside the snow was
impossible.

It was a night
when flight

hadn't yet been
invented

and only snow
took to the air.

I only noticed him
because a tear

silently and slowly
trickled down

his left cheek
and hung suspended there

for a century it seemed
before falling on the book

before him
that he wasn't reading

only holding as if
in defence against the world

and I wondered what
his grief was.


*

It was our first Christmas  without our mother and I wanted to be there for my father. But the snow was fearsome and no flights were to be had...you had to go to the airport and stand in line outside the closed terminal to have even a chance to maybe be lucky. After three hours I got lucky and made it home. An old man was sitting on his suitcase and holding a book upside down. pretending to read and crying silently to himself.I was in the same state myself and his grief was the embodiment of mine. Looking up at the darkness as giant flakes of snow fell upon us it was as if we had been transported back to a time when flight hadn't yet been invented and the heavens were inviolate and could not be touched.