i for private reasons I will take this journey much more seriously than is strictly necessary armed with a double dose of vaccine I am still convinced of a fatal weakness in my auto-immune defenses the sleek sublimity of an airplane seems like the ideal implement to penetrate my porous borders and this is the coward’s conviction that I have set a course to conquer with an eye to posterity never mind that I’m fleeing failure and shunning sadness on the way the second chance that I hope to discover may or may not be granted me and I will live in regret forever no matter how far the plane takes me ii already there is the first ill omen my driver distracted by the malfunctioning GPS but the stern rebuke I formulate mentally works like a charm to remind me there’s nothing wrong that some magical thinking can’t turn into reassurance the casual annunciation of a new bureaucratic challenge is just old fashioned security in a puzzlingly convenient form and the first refusal is hardly final even a stubborn app will change its mind given different data and the proper passport this is the benefit claimed in doubt by doubt itself to travel again as a Canadian affords me a secretly pleasing guilt as I see there are new pale flags to decode even at my right elbow while I wolf my food with atypical speed and the yearning glare of a handy soldier to meet or avoid [ctd over] I wonder who notices I’m double-masking one worn two years ago made waves and though I am slight and compact on the plane I am man-spreading arm-rests, neutral zones, are mine so I am a teenager splaying once again albeit in pain iii finally the unlikeliness of airborne flight takes pride of place and I understand that this is no banal occurrence we are risking something by our very absence from the earth’s surface population we have ascended beyond the imaginings of kings and emperors while getting a tissue from my back pocket seems to be something of a production so how far should I say we have really come?… Read More “(FREE VERSE) LETTER FROM A WARY TRAVELER by Brad Buchanan”