While I Waited There by J.R. Solonche

Photo of people in airport
Photo by Toby Yang on Unsplash
While I waited there
in the terminal at Newark,
I spotted something
out of the corner of my eye.
It was a bird flying back
and forth along the ceiling,
and because I was
in an airline terminal,
I thought a small ironic
thought and smiled a small
ironic smile and made
a mental note to write
a small ironic poem later,
but just then another
passenger turned to her
companion and said,
Look at that bird flying
around trying to get out,
and her companion
turned to her and said,
No, I don’t think so.
Would you trade
all this food and shelter
for a hundred feet of sky?
So I took back my small
ironic thought, my small
ironic smile, my mental
note about my small ironic
poem to write theirs
straight from left to right.

J.R. Solonche
J.R. Solonche is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today & Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough (Dos Madres Press), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), The Time of Your Life (forthcoming April 2020 from Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (forthcoming 2020 from Deerbrook Editions), and coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.

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