By Earl J. Wilcox.

I wish I could write on a plane while traveling
 

to a city in the Middle East. Though my stop
 

is Dubai—peaceful oasis hundreds of miles
 

from battle zones in Iraq–if fear and emotion
 

trigger words, traveling to a world ravaged
 

by wars ought to give birth at least to prefixes
 

or shapes like words. Poems refuse to be born.
 

When I fly west for a visit with a sick sister–
 

a trip without a happy ending—should not
 

I at least find sounds to chart a poem about
 

endings and beginnings, family ties, siblings
 

and stepmothers, memories piling on top
 

of each other, emotions brimming above
 

and beneath surfaces to fill a chapbook.
 

My inability to write while traveling seems
 

a puny admission that whether the trip’s to
 

a place where pleasure rules or death keeps
 

company with everyone inside a sickroom,
 

something nudges me into solitude, space
 

for wonder, a momentary stay of the soul
 

until stability arrives as I wait, free to consider
 

how once again I breathe words and write.