The wonder of it all

My flight is on time. I board the plane, USA Today, and Maya Angelou's words in hand. I settle in and look forward to two and a half hours of comfortable nothingness. Another traveler, another flight. Just going home, nothing more.

The plane turns on the runway and from my window I catch a glimpse of the long line of lights leading our path home and imagine we're on a giant palm about to be blown into the sky with the fairy dust of a wish.

The light out my window changes slightly and I turn my head to see. We're above one level of clouds, beneath another. The sunset breaks through a hole in the lower shelf and the sky appears to be on fire. I gaze at the deep red and orange stretching out before me and coloring the clouds above. I wonder if I have ever seen these colors before and think I have not. I smile to myslef and imagine jumping from the plane and landing on the warm cotton tufts..

Then the sky is empty, no clouds to be seen. Dark as dark ever was and ever could be. Beneath me though, the lights. The lives. Clusters of life below. I see a city like a heart bright with life, veins of pulsing and illuminated highways leading to and from. Neighborhoods on a grid, strip malls, hospitals, churches and office parks. Homes and dreams we pass over. There below someone is met at the door with the eager face of a child just waiting to wrap her sticky hands around her father. And there, someone waits for someone else to return. Someone is working towards a dream; someone else is trying to escape a nightmare. Over there someone is cooking dinner, and across the tracks someone else is wondering where in the world dinner will come from tonight. Down the road, someone is planning to leave. Across town someone is figuring out how to arrive. Someone is reaching for a drink and someone else is swearing this will be the last one. Someone is giving birth, and someone will be nine months from now. Someone is glowing in the promise of love and someone is just on the edge of it, while someone else is thinking they'd do anything to get the feeling back. Someone is paying the bills, and someone is taking out the trash. Someone is feeding the dogs. Someone is dreaming, someone is hoping, someone is worrying, and someone is praying.

You could knock on any door and find a story waiting for you there, and we slice through the skies above it all.

I return to Ms. Angelou and read, Don't the moon look lonely shining through the trees?