A little airport on a little Caribbean island, the airfield is short, the plane will hold only eight passengers. There is no x-ray of the luggage, no magnetic screening for weapons, he’ll leave his shoes on.  If he were to change planes in Miami these things would be done then. But he’s not changing planes in Miami, he will get on a bus there and go to Atlanta. The odds that customs will check his one small bag are not large.

His daughter lives in Atlanta and she has married a man that he intends meet for the first time.  This manner of marriage, without a father’s approval, without the village celebration, does not sit well with him.  He has cosseted a little mouse of anger that has grown now into a snarling bobcat prowling his skull.

 “The past, like so many bad poems,

waits to be reordered,

and the future needs reordering too.

Rain dampens the brick, and the house sends up its smell