Layover

The plane

Shuddered,
Collected itself, exhaled, and
Gulped in the sharp-chinned
Pittsburgh man

Who chose us, 

Baby notwithstanding,
Wedged to the window,
And ordered a beer. Vegas
Had left him

A little drunk, and sad, as it made him
Think of his wife. "We had twenty years,"
He said to my husband,

Whose shoulders guarded me trying to nurse,
Whose neighborly chat brought to the surface
The odd flotsam of a stranger's life,
Which he held out,
Coughing:

His long blank as he rummaged the basement
For one instructor's name, who had downed
A Cessna, taking his whole family with him;

The whisper of his wife's taped picture from the billfold:
"I washed it," he told us
And her,
Apologetic;

The habit
He regretted
Wafting off his skin, his coat,
Engulfing the aisle;

He made our daughter smile:
Blue slits, fierce in the canyoned face,
Peered through fingers like prison bars
Nobbed with gargoyle knuckles.

We made him wish to start over.
He made us wish for him: love,

And for ourselves,
Behind Matthew's shoulders,
I prayed for twenty,
And twenty,
And twenty more,
And twenty more after that,

And still it will not be enough.