Flight To Catalina

On a darkening planet speeding toward our death, we pierce a rosy cloud & hit clean air, we glide above the red infernal smog, we leave the mammon city far behind. Here - where the air is clear as nothing, where cactus pads are prickly as stars, where buffalo chips are gilded by the sun & the moon tastes like a peppermint- we land. 'Have we flown to heaven?' I inquired (& meant it). The airport was a leveled mountaintop. We took the cloudbank at a tilt & bumped the runway just ten degrees from crashing, certain death. If I'm to die, God, let me die flying! Fear is worse than death- I know that now. The cloudbanks of my life have silver linings. Beyond them: cactus pads, clear earth, dear sky.