Embossed on the Memory

When I was little, each New Year brought new calendars to the house. 

Usually provided by our neighborhood grocer, 

the pictures were attached to a pasteboard backing with

a little calendar below the grocer's name and address.

The pictures were brightly colored stock photos, 

and often had embossed surfaces to accent the trees, flowers,

or whatever. If you had told me that skies could be so blue,

trees so green, or fruit so red I would have said,

"Maybe, but only in Vermont" -- or wherever the photo

had been taken. Nothing where I lived was ever

as pretty as the scenes on the calendars.

Sometimes, however, I look up to see the sky

on a clear day is as blue, the leaves so green, and the

fruit so red as any other place I ever imagined.

This time, a jet contrail marked the path of a plane

as it wove a path among others similar to it,

all to places where, it is hoped, the sky is as beautiful

for them as it sometimes is for me.

Winter's Curtain

It was just past eight o'clock Tuesday morning 

when I took this picture. Far beyond the lacy winter treeline 

and well past the blue gray curtain of clouds,

a patch of sunlit blue sky could be seen, marked by a jet's

contrail, tracing the plane's path above the winter's

cold and snow that swaddled us here below.

Planning Dreams

One clear evening, I went to the west end of my neighborhood, 

to a place where I could stand alongside the highway 

to get a good view of the sunset. The exchanges to enter and exit

Interstate 74 from I-465 have been torn up for the past year to create wider lanes and more sweeping, easier to navigate turns. 

Some of it has been completed and drivers have been happy 

to make use of the new pavement.

Since I was a girl, I've been fascinated by the contrails left behind

by jets as they fly over the place I stand, rooted to the ground.

I especially like to see the skies in the morning and evenings, when the

contrails of many planes seem to intersect, weaving descriptions

of their journeys, just as the cars and trucks speeding past me on 

the highway were creating theirs. Early in our long relationship, 

Carl caught me watching the planes and pointed some of them out to me,

partly in jest, telling me where it was headed and its altitude. 
I understood then that, just like the trucks on the road, 
each plane had its specified lane, its place in the sky. 

He brought me outdated Jeppessen aeronautical charts, 

which I still have, describing the routes. 

I loved them then and still do. The picture below, showing 

the Indianapolis area, was scanned from an old Jeppessen 

United States Low Altitude En Route chart.