Thunderstorms hammer the airport, premature 
night blankets runways. Ghost-lightening flickers
on retinas like characters in silent movies. Promise
of a two-hour journey, broken, revised to four. 

An avalanche of cancelled flights, gate changes 
overwhelms ticketing systems. Dispirited travelers
curse the sky, sulk in restaurants, bars, wishing
for stale pretzels, overpriced beer, watery cola. 

In hour six, a single flight is posted to my destination,
gate opening directly onto the tarmac. A tiny airliner,
designed for Lilliputians, crouches under filmy curtains 
of rain, unsheltered stairway clawing at its hatch.

Umbrellas turn inside-out, clothing sponges the storm.
Carry-on bags confiscated, too large to stuff overhead
bins the size of lunchboxes. Checked luggage won’t 
fit either; rejected cargo tagged to ship the next day. 

Boarding looks like scenes from a nature documentary:
mole-rats scrambling through cramped burrows, 
dominant males competing for food, mating rights, 
malnourished from foraging in heaps of urban waste.  

Hours seven, eight and nine drown in traffic jams. 
Idling airplanes languish on taxiways, nose-to-tailpipe,
radar probing for safe passage through knotted clouds. 
Refuel, return to the queue, refuel, return to the queue.  

Shelf-lives of flight crews expire during the tenth hour.
Go back to the terminal, order replacements. Only one
food kiosk open, unprepared for hordes of escapees 
from aviation jails, exhausted, hungry, pissed-off!   

Clearance granted in hour twelve, instructions to follow-
the-leader into corridors of calm air. Smooth flying 
but unnerving to be ensconced in a miniature aluminum 
tube dodging towering blooms of electrified turbulence. 

Touch down after fourteen torturous hours, route that 
could be driven in eight. Reunited with my car, I embrace 
the wheel like a beloved pet, apologize for abandonment,
promise to clean the garage, feed it premium gasoline.