Permission to Land

In this poem, I mix some things about my dad with some things about me and some total pieces of fiction. I hope it gets to the feeling I was trying to convey.

                                                        Permission to Land

                                         Sometimes when we kids got cranky
                                         in the backseat, our father would
                                         pull the cigarette lighter from the dash
                                         and pretend to be the pilot
                                         he had once hoped to be,
                                         back when he had a private license
                                         and had followed the turnpike
                                         in the fog from Wilkes-Barre to Philly
                                         in a Piper Cub with his new bride
                                        white-knuckled beside him,
                                        wondering how wild a man
                                        she had married.

                                        She was more comfortable
                                        in the Studebaker as Dad,
                                        the traveling salesman, merely
                                        made believe, speaking into the
                                        lighter as if it were a microphone:

                                        “This is your pilot speaking.
                                        We are cruising at 60 miles an hour
                                        at an altitude of three feet. Please
                                        keep your seat belts fastened.
                                        Estimated time of arrival,
                                        shortly after you stop saying,
                                        ‘Are we there yet?’”

                                       This would keep us quiet for a while.
                                        If Mom and Dad were lucky,
                                        we would even fall asleep
                                        and have to be carried
                                        from the car into Pop-Pop’s cottage.

                                        I think of this while driving the same turnpike,
                                        late at night, the backseat empty, the kids grown,
                                        a thin Jersey wall between me
                                        and the oncoming traffic.
                                        Dad landed long ago on some far-off,
                                        smoke-filled field, killed by all those
                                        cigars he said he never inhaled,
                                        leaving me alone at the wheel,
                                        staring into the dark and wondering
                                        are we there yet?

Note to my Greek students:  Yes, this is an old one that you've already read - and maybe even written an essay about.