memories

I just found my notebook from my trip to Israel again. Thought I'd share this previous post.

 

 

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The only time I was ever in Germany

It was on the way to Israel in December of 1999. We landed in Frankfort in the wee hours of the morning. I had forgotten all about it (but at my age 'forgetting' is normal....) But I was reading from the notebook I took on that trip and found this poem.

Watching dawn come at Frankfort Airport

Staring out on a school of
     planes
(neatly arranged like huge
  patients in a ward
  attached with feeding tubes
  of walkways to the
  terminal)
dawn creeps in.

It comes as a lightening
    of the sky
      from black
      to indigo
      to navy blue
      to steely gray.

Somewhere on the flight
somewhere over the north Atlantic
somewhere at 37,000 feet
I lost six hours.
Dawn comes late in Frankfort
   in December
but my watch is still at
   10 'til 2 in the tiny
   hours of Eastern Standard Time.

Who owes me these six hours?
How do I get them back?
All around me members of
my group are sprawled
  on black, comfortable
   seats,
dreaming that in sleeping they
  can steal back the time.
But those six hours are
   simply gone, I tell you!
Poof! Disappeared! Lost....

Now a monorail passes outside the window,
   people lit up inside, heading for airplanes.

I can see planes dropping to earth
and leaping away on faraway
runways.

People are trapped inside
each of them, headed toward
Budapest, Singapore,
New York, Moscow,
New Dehlia. Losing
or finding hours as they
go.

I hope someone nice finds
 the six hours I lost
 and uses them well.