Merrill Oliver Douglas: “Home”
HOME
That night when the plane droned in circles
over Indiana, waiting for permission to land,
the captain coming on every half-hour
or so to promise it would soon be our turn,
a child whining fitfully several rows back,
print in my book growing smaller by the minute,
that’s what it feels like this afternoon: lead air
salted with colorless flakes lashed slantwise;
spruce trees muffled in dead weight, bewildered
limbs trembling; no plow, no mail, no news.
Merrill Oliver Douglas makes her living as a freelance writer. She has published poems in Crab Creek Review, South 85 Journal, IthacaLit, Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, and Stone Canoe, among other journals.