The Elephant Vanishes, by Stacey Murphy

I meditate on the removal of obstacles
and the Universe appears —
a great golden elephant
in a green, wooded glade
carefully picking logs off the path before me
moving them aside gently:
hesitation, gangly and thorny;
lack, hollow and brittle;
distraction, thick and heavy.
With one look over her shoulder and a playful flip
of her tail the elephant
winks and she vanishes.
It is up to me to move forward.

Full Upright and Locked, by Jim Mazza

There is a moment when ...
you have buckled in, placed your tray table into the full upright and locked position, and listened to the safety message about exit doors and unlikely events (such as a water landing), how to inflate your life vest by pulling on the tab after you exit the aircraft or by blowing into the small red valve (should the life vest fail to inflate) and how the little beacon light will illuminate automatically.

There is a moment when ...
the captain says over the loudspeaker "We are #3 for take off" and "Flight attendants please be seated" and we are reminded to keep the window shades up during take-off and landing.

There is a moment when ...
the child in the row behind you has stopped kicking your seat and the guy next to you has finished his dripping hot-sausage-and-pepper-and-onion submarine sandwich brought onto the plane in his carry-on, and the arm rests are lowered.

There is a moment when ...
the plane moves toward the runway and waits, and then moves forward again and waits, and then, finally, makes a turn onto the runway to wait again.

There is a moment when ...
sitting at the end of the runway it seems everyone, for a split second, has stopped talking — although the baby in Row 29 is still crying.

There is a moment when ...
in the near silence the plane is perfectly still but its power and throbbing desire to hurtle down the runway is obvious and all around you.

There is a moment when ...
there is absolute peace as you realize that the adventure is afoot and there will be memories and photos and writing-filled travel journals.

There is a moment when ...
the pilot releases the brake, the engines roar and the plane speeds down the runway — and it is a moment of light-headed happiness and full-on joy!

Warm Recollections of my Father, Prompted by Mary Oliver’s line “It was a long time ago that…,” by Saskya van Nouhuys

It was a long time ago that my grandmother died. My father was a teenager. Soon after that he went to boarding school which must have been lonely, though he wouldn’t admit to being lonely. He takes pride in his solitude. After leaving he didn't live with his father again until much later, when I was five years old. While we lived in my grandfather’s house I woke up early to sit, watching him do his morning yoga. 

It was a long time ago that my father, in a fit of rebellion, dropped out of graduate school at Columbia and moved back to California to teach writing at Stanford University. He lived a beatnik life, met my mother, and played an unstructured croquet game that lasted days and spread over the front and back yards of a whole neighborhood.

It was a long time ago that my father taught me how to ride a bike at the park. After losing interest in guiding me awkwardly as I tried to balance he retreated to the tennis court with his friend. Between shots they yelled pointers and made encouraging gestures. Gradually I figured out how to ride on my own.

It was a long time ago that we had a yard with a lawn that my father mowed. In one corner was a navel orange tree that seemed magical because the oranges from it had no seeds. It became even more magical after my father explained that since it had no seeds it must be the only one, and there would never be another, because trees grew from seeds.

It was a long time ago that my father made scrambled eggs that were too spicy for the family breakfast on Saturday mornings, and then went off to play tennis with my mother, and then came back and made espresso with her, and then worked in the garden while listening first to the baseball game and then later, in the afternoon, to the opera, on the transistor radio that he carried from spot to spot in the yard as he worked.

It was a long time ago that my father and I painted rainbow stripes in the tiny downstairs bathroom of the house I grew up in. When we finished it was entirely striped, all four walls, the door, the floor, and the ceiling.

It was a long time ago that I sat on the stairs eavesdropping on the adults in the living room where they gathered every Tuesday night to discuss their dreams in “dream group.”  One morning my father told me he would fall asleep on his side with his arm up. Then when his arm fell down he would wake up and remember the dream he was having at that moment. He explained that it was a way to remember dreams you otherwise wouldn’t know about. I tried it that night and many after, but failed. I still try it now and then.

It was a long time ago that I helped my father build a darkroom in the garage. Then he taught me how to use it, and I had a quiet refuge where I could go as a teen and in the dim red light expose images on to photographic paper, bathe the paper in a sequence of trays of chemicals, and watch as the image took form, and fixed.

It was a long time ago that my beloved cat died, the one who was born in our yard and slept with me every night. My father said tenderly, with tears in his eyes that I knew, even then, were for me, not the cat, “Mewer died.”