Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Grasping At Clouds

I think about it all drifting away.
Being gone in an instant.
One minute here,
the next….
I think about those poor people
on Air France flight 447.
The plane shaking and coming apart
in the air.
Their last seconds.
Did they know they had reached the end
or were they told everything would be o.k.?
I think about screams,
and hands touching,
and eyes searching one another for answers.
I think about the last few seconds.
Bodies falling out of the sky,
crashing into the ocean.
I think about how fast it all goes:
My parents.
My childhood.
This life.
I start wondering if I am living it well enough.
I don’t think I am.
Too much energy focused on bills and cleaning
and tidying up corners.
Dental floss and lint traps.
Trips to Target and Costco.
Radishes and Kale.
Meanwhile, vast expanses of my life have gone unattended to.
I’ve spent too much time trying to please,
to be good,
to be responsible.
What has it gotten me,
besides a clean conscience?
Where are the memories
for my hope chest?
Where are the bridges I’ve jumped off of?
The African elephants I’ve seen on safari?
How many albums have I made?
Where is that documentary I was supposed to start?
Or that novel I’ve been threatening to write for twenty years?
How is it that life keeps getting in the way
of living?
I think about the people in that plane
grasping at clouds
as they fell from the sky
and I wonder about what I have been holding on to.