I went for a run
in the rain
at the Vineyard sports complex.
As I ran the circuit
dodging puddles growing in the track
droplets splattering my glasses
I remembered the jet flyover
in 2020, when the whole family
came down to this same park,
wandered out into the vast soccer fields
keeping our distance from other family clumps
gathered for the same purpose
waiting for the jets from the air force base
fifty miles north of us to fly over
as a show of solidarity, or strength,
or to cheer the locked down population
or something I don't remember anymore.
I thought about the pilots, what they
might have seen, flying the length of the state,
over clusters of people in parks in towns
from Tremonton to St George, people like
black dots far below craning their necks at the sky
expectantly, watching for hope, or for change,
or for evidence that the world was not ending.
For us, it was an excuse to leave the house
to show the kids something they could see
with their own eyes, and not through a
glowing screen. I didn't write anything down
about it, so I don't remember how they reacted,
don't remember how we felt, or what we said,
making it just another strange episode
from a strange year, that will never fully fade
from memory, like the sticky black x-shaped
residue on restaurant and grocery store floors,
which, years ago, told us where to stand,
told us that safety was found in separation--
how true that message feels when viewed
from a remove of so few years.
