At the precise moment of his departure,

my father came to me in the cockpit, heading west.

We were flying to the gold coast and the sun disc was sinking,

we were primed to the horizon as we are trained to be,

great banks of cumuli pink beneath the fuselage,

we were primed to the tangents and quadrants of atmosphere,

following the earth's curvature, 269 souls on board,

and a box of birds in the cargo hold,

when I felt a pain in my heart, right under my pilot's wings,

it was sharp and sudden like treading on a pin, deep

into your heel flesh, and the green ray shot up,

a blaze from the upper rim, like a peak in a cardiograph,

and I blinked and the pain blinked and the green spiked itself

over the falling sun, over the unobstructed horizon,

it flared and flew for one, maybe two seconds, green to blue

to violet as a bruise.