Fear of Flying

Stop to think and you wake to the nightmare.
Trapped in a narrow, neon-lit tube,
wrapped in vibration and tortured air,
thousands of feet above your natural habitat,
held-up only by your belief in human ingenuity.

The sheer effrontery scares me senseless.
Memories of Icarus haunt my monkey brain.
My prehensile limbs ache for the security
of the trees I wish I had never forsaken
to defy gravity and flaunt nature’s laws.

Then, thank God, rationality returns.
The soothing statistics for air travel,
and the comforting numbness of normality,
help us reassume the customary mask
we show to the world and the mirror.