ISSUE VI

We’re in Dallas when word comes of a cyclonic storm
scheduled to move up the East coast this evening
and have to get out of Dodge so to speak ASAP—
first cancelling tomorrow’s late flight, packing this morning
calling a car service in Baltimore for our change in plans
having said goodbye to our artist friends last night
at the museum party for the Groundswell Land Art show
when we were young together in the last century’s Seventies.

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My wife packs my diapers in three different suitcases
with copies of the museum catalog in two of them;
her make-up kit, our dirty socks and my heating pad go in
a small roller hoping not to get knocked around too early
by headwinds. We’ve checked by phone with the dock master
for extra lines and our daughter for looking in on the cat.
We’ve planned for every contingency Nature allows beyond
the punch it can throw in our faces and my imagination 
of the worst, how it comes out of the sky and settles on a wing.