Rattlesnake Eyes

That flight out of Seattle --
that flight in 1969 --
that leap from
a 17 year long caravan
was a catapult
from the dark crevice
I had been traversing
from birth.

As person born on a caravan
I didn't know
I was on a caravan.
I just jumped on the
wagon because
that's what I think I
supposed to do,

carried along
by the currents
of a stream
flowing down
whatever dry riverbed appeared
on the landscape,
and I held on --
not because I wanted to,
but because I didn't know
I didn't have to.

That's what I was thinking
when I stared out those
sterile Windows
of that United Airlines flight
rising above Mount Rainier --
blinkless,
cold,
uncompromising,
like the eyes of
rattlesnakes
I once hunted
along the igneous cliffs
outside of Connell,
every bit as frightened
of them
as they were
of me,

as I was of falling off
that caravan.

josjr (2012 1002)
Stowaway In Boston