The Fairy

she blew in after the lunch bells had faded, Sunday round two in the afternoon, beautiful in that white-brown whirl, dancing and floating between the aisles like some mad angel in the vortex air of the slow train rumbling toward London.

suspended there, afloat in the jazz of the rails, she drifted into the baggage jungle, over the seats, through a valley of hard-back suitcases stacked like old beat dreams, and then up whoosh into the air, sideways around a lonely bicycle chained, slowing for a breath, then fast past my eyes in a blur of light, suddenly diving down and settling soft on my knee like she’d chosen me out of all the sad passengers.

she paused a while, wings trembling in the engine hum, feeling the beat of my heart maybe, or just the vibration of the wheels on steel, and then lifted again, effortless, back down the aisle in a lazy spiral, out the cracked window near Cambridge where the fields rolled green and endless.

white fluffy floating fairies, yes, parachutes of germinating seeds blowing free from Asclepias Syriaca, the common milkweed plant, scattering their wild gospel on the wind, going, going, gone.

heading to London,
a skin of Christmas cheer,
Deborah’s birthday.