Poem of the Week–Floating

(I was reminded of this poem by my former student, Skye Nightingale Robertson. Thank you, Skye. I wrote it in 1990 when my brother was a pilot for Delta Airlines and I was getting up early to teach school.)

Just before the clock radio

Snaps on, I am floating in the dark

Somewhere between sleep and waking

Somehow I know

At this moment

In another time zone

My brother is landing

Suspended forty feet ahead of

Wings he cannot see

He grabs a handful of throttles

And pulls them back.

The turbines settle toward silence

Wings flex slightly upward

And the rippling fuselage sags

Toward the black-streaked runway.

For a moment, we float together,

Buoyed by air trapped beneath the wing,

In the second between flying and waking

In the moment between dreaming and landing

We float toward earth

And the dark dawn.


–Dan Verner