Departure

(Shannon Airport, January 2013)

We catch sight of him again
behind the window at Departures,

that familiar looping saunter.
He turns to wave,

smiles at our thumbs-up gestures.
You squeeze my hand,

as hard as you did
that night of his birth,

and he is gone.

Gerard Hanberry’s most recent collecion What Our Shoes Say

About Us was published by Salmon earlier this year.