Three Perfect Days 4/14

A LOT of life has happened in the past month. Consequently, if something wasn't directly in front of my face, it didn't get done (hence the abrupt end to poetry month). Some of the dust has finally started to settle, and, although a few of the waves will continue to roll for a while, I am ready to catch up on some of the things that got set aside while I attended to more important issues in my life and the lives of my friends. I am still excited about the poems I picked out for April, so I will pick up right where I left off, on the 14th of the month, and finish the (new) poetry month. April might be the official poetry month, but the poems are good year-round! Enjoy!

Three Perfect Days

In the middle seat of an airplane,

between an overweight woman

whose arm takes over the armrest

and a man immersed in his computer game,

I am reading the inflight magazine

about three perfect days somewhere: Kyoto

this time, but it could be anywhere -

Madagascar or one of the Virgin Islands.

There is always the perfect hotel

where at breakfast the waiter smiles

as he serves an egg as perfectly coddled

as a Spanish Infanta.

There are walks over perfect bridges - their spans

defying physics - and visits to zoos

where rain is forbidden,

and no small child is ever bored or crying.

I would settle now for just one perfect day

anywhere at all, a day without

mosquitoes, or traffic, or newspapers

with their headlines.

A day without any kind of turbulence -

certainly not this kind, as the pilot tells us

to fasten our seatbelts, and even

the flight attendants look nervous.

-Linda Pastan