Preparation

Two weeks ago I attended a board meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Now Manitoba is generally colder and more wintry than Atlanta, so I enjoyed the relative warmth of Georgia in March. I didn't reckon with the dead grass season, so I was disappointed not to find green grass and blooming trees, but the meetings were good, and I could enjoy a trip back to Atlanta sometime. While travelling, I wrote the following as a way of coping with the 1 a.m. start to my first day of travel.

Friday morning one A.M.
For to early to be ... morning.
Quick shower, coffee, toast to go
Two hours and a half on the road.
A flight waits patiently
For groggy passengers, half asleep.
An hour later we land
Short flight -- long drive --
Still too early to be morning.

A new flight waits in turn,
Soon we climb -- higher, faster, further.
Voices pierced by one strong voice
The announcement cutting through conversations
Replacing sports and casual talk with
The business of flying ... and landing.

On the ground walking and walking,
Long passages, sign after sign calls out
"Baggage" -- somewhere ahead.
Pictures spring out, huge rocks on the walls.
Home! Ngivela eMatonjeni!
Words spring out within the rock pictures.
Nkosi sikelela iAfrika.
Thoughts of home, unbidden, unexpected
Interlude before we consummate our flights
And meet.

6 March 2010