The Prog Rock Airplane Of Your Love

Originally posted 6/29/2012.

You, flying the prog-rock airplane of your love,
make the crazy leap to stratosphere.
Something comes knocking on the hatch door.

It is the object of your affection, wearing a jet pack,
holding the ring you gave her in her hand;
she hurls it into the plane and swoops away.

Your crew secures the hatch behind her.
They turn to look at you,
stoic in the pilot’s seat.

How did she fly so high as to get to you?
Some questions are meant either to be unanswered,
to be incomprehensible without a life change,

or to be aged into
before answering.  It rarely matters which 
of these is true.  What matters is what the pilot does 

with the prog-rock airplane of his love 
after it has been rejected.  Does the pilot choose
to settle into an awkwardly worded

power ballad nose dive, or to surge higher
on waves of bass triplets and Mixolydian modal guitar runs
until the plane reaches its structural limits and explodes?

You choose another way, push a tear back into its duct 
through sheer strength of will; then,
as if in a coda, you head back to base.