she is a stewardess, flying
through turbulence, never crashing, never
landing.  Her skirt is too
short, showing each half-pound
creeping onto her small frame.
She cannot stop to pull
down her skirt or reapply
her makeup or fix her 
hair or even drink coffee.
 
The passengers plead for more
for more drinks for more
pillows more peanuts more sickbags.   
Customers call for more quiet 
as babies and grown men
howl as fat women pray 
to Jesus without a rosary.
She rolls her eyes, correcting
everyone’s grammar in her mind.
 
Her coworkers are friends.  They
roll their eyes as, voices
lowered, they discuss the passengers.  
While they stock the cart,
they give everyone nicknames.  They
have nicknames for coworkers, too.
They can’t find pillows; they 
fill the cart with blankets
or raincoats or sticky uniforms.
They can’t find Dramamine; they
raid their purses for M&Ms
breath mints or hard candy.
Someday this plane will land.
My mother swears that she
will go back to Maine
and never leave.  Her friends
and family will all have
to find her there.

North of the mountains, 
winter winds and spring fog sweep 
over the pond and through red pine,
swaddling us as we read and grade papers,
tying us to this place.
Summers I wander the downtown
that reminds my husband of Indiana,
the small towns of wide streets and storefronts
he wanted to escape from, the ones
I wanted to escape to for a little while.  
The daily Greyhound from New York City
crawls into our town.  A former student
or two emerge, coming back from the city
of subways, museums, Japanese gardens,
vendors selling oranges and helados, 
the city of raised voices, sudden rain.
When I come home, my husband is listening
to all the old music on YouTube,
the songs he used to have on vinyl.

We talk about going back,
but tonight the stars come out,
stunning us with far more 
than we could see back home.  
Tomorrow morning,
the fog will roll in with dawn,
binding us here
to this place.