How difficult it is to move,
Even from simple place to place.
How hard to pack the books, to shove
The cat into its carrying case.
How hard to sit in Airportland
Through one more endless flight delay
While Trebizond or Samarkand
Wait half a universe away.
How hard to get the papers filed
That separate you from your past,
Newly and legally enisled.
And yet, and yet my father’s last
Great journey out of self to shade –
How easily and quickly made.
*****
Gail White writes: “I admit I love this one. I’ve experienced all of it except the change of citizenship – the trials of moving house, the frustrations of airline travel – and my father’s easy transition, just lying down and quietly going on his way. It turned into a sonnet before I even thought about it.”
First published in The Formalist.
Gail White lives in the Louisiana bayou country with her husband and cats. Her latest chapbook, Paper Cuts, is available on Amazon, along with her books Asperity Street and Catechism. She appears in a number of anthologies, including two Pocket Poetry chapbooks and Nasty Women Poets. She enjoys being a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine. Her dream is to live in Oxfordshire, but failing that, almost any place in Western Europe would do.
“EEEEEK! CHAOS.” by confidence, comely. is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 
‘Newly and legally enisled” is perfectly and wonderfully apposite. I like this very much indeed.
It brings to mind a poem by the UK poet Muriel Stuart, who died in 1967, and since I can’t find it online I’ll try to paste it in here because I think you might like it, Gail.
Morituri
When I saw you making sorrowful end
(Knowing that you were soon about to die)
Sorting your rings, promising such and such—
Each careful, sad disposal to each friend,
Your books, your furs, your house, your tapestry,
Troubled about how little and how much, —
I thought how easily the daisies go,
How tranquilly each fading frond and leaf
Slips back into the mould without demur,
With nothing to bequeath, regret or owe;
How soon the hawthorn after journey brief
Lies down and pulls the grasses over her.
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Always great work from Gail.
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