I had a friend who saved them all,
Air Uzbekistan, Varig, TWA, El Al,
puddle-jumpers, global giants, fly-
by-nights, the stalwart and the gone,
Aer Lingus, Qantas, Pan Am, Air Bhutan,
the pioneers, come-latelys, wide bodies,
prop planes, ANA, BOAC, Aeroflot.
Prullenzakje in Roman script, something
else in Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Burmese,
alphabets opaque to me, and hence
amenable to that awe of the illiterate—
those graceful pagodas, gibbous moons,
crescents, words grown stroke
upon ancient stroke—but barf bag
still, and so I pluck this pale green sack
from the pocket before me on Biman Air,
borne not by an incontinent urge to puke
but by the sudden welcome thought of he
who taught me decades ago, on the bumpy
post-monsoon loop, Chittagong to Dhaka
to Mymensingh, on our assignment to assess
damage inflicted by the swollen Brahmaputra,
how to withstand turbulence, and measure loss.