Lost Flight

There are no orderly towns pricked in light
below us, no stars pinned to the dark
that is not a sky. Nothing, not even clouds.
All around us, everything is formless and void,
as though dissolved in the steady roar of the engines.
We fly on. Surely the pilots have noticed?
Do they say nothing because there is nothing left to say?
The other passengers seem oblivious.
Erasure presses in upon the skin of our fuselage,
yet we keep doing the things the living do.
Chatting. Sipping coffee. Reading. Making plans.
We laugh and lie to ourselves. We doze.
We think a plethora of days awaits us.
We feel no vertigo; there is no encroaching cold,
no bright light forming in a tunnel ahead of us.
Before oblivion, the edge is subtle.
Meanwhile, we have the cabin lights to guide us.

—John Philip Johnson