John Grey
I remember deplaning by steps onto the tarmac,
and then stopping halfway to the terminal,
looking around at that Fokker Friendship,
its props now as quiet as the outback air,
still not quite believing I’d been up so high
in that machine, strapped in, drowned by sound,
the city, the towns, the farmland, the occasional
stands of eucalyptus, the scrub, even an open-cut
coal mine looking up at me from below,
its wide maw revealing trucks and earth movers
and scattered hard-hatted ant-people.
My oldest sister waved to me from behind glass,
but she was no miracle though it had been months
since I’d last seen her.
I looked from the airplane to the sky,
as if I now had myself another home,
blue as ocean, feathered with one or two rainless clouds.
It felt as if the real journey was over
and though I’d never been in this place before,
family made it familiar.
But I had no people in that vast expanse above me.
Just me, reading a magazine, sipping a Coke, looking out the window.
It was the first time in my life when I was neither son nor brother.