Thoughts from a Descending Plane

We were over land for about a minute before I realized it by small roads, probably more like paths, marking dry ground. Soon I saw, far off, small breaks in a sheet of clouds. It took a moment to see that these were mountain peaks taking the role of Moses, but parting sky rather than sea. As I began to see more roads, small towns, and even the swift rotation of great white windmills, terror began to sieze up within me. I tried to tell myself that this was jitters from little sleep or shudders from the poor coffee they served, but this is fear.

Now the ground beneath me is a brown patchwork, like a fine basket or more like an earthen-clay mosaic. I was unaware there were so many variations on the one brown. These new shapes and contours transfix me, and the country below is great and terrible, indeed. There is so much of her, and so little of me.

Here and there lie outposts with roads radiating out like the spokes of wagon wheels, and yet somehow the towns do seem connected in some as-yet-unidentifiable way. Roads weave improbably and then wind up concurrant like snakes winding about each other.

I am here.