Contrails

Overhead, I see three, crisp, parallel contrails flowing south. Below me, a green river runs north. Somewhere in between, an osprey circles, perhaps waiting to plunge and pluck a snake from the water.

I consider the contrails. Big jetliners are carrying passengers somewhere. I’d rather ride with the osprey or the river. They would take me where I need to go in my mind or Oregon.

Can a human being leave a contrail that others see? Can a writer or artist? That sounds like a bad thing. Nothing concrete. Just an ethereal appearance and then dissolution.

I really don’t even know the science of them and I am not going to look it up. I think it’s something about evaporation.

More contrails appear. One pierces a cirrus cloud. White through white to create an unnamed color of white.

I consider white. I own one article of white apparel—a Western shirt. There is no other white in my life, except faces around me.

All the contrails trace south. I am in a flight path.

Do you know that hummingbirds fly through contrails on their migration flights?

Is there a rock song with the word contrails in it?

I have known exactly one person in my life who acted as a sort of contrail. I think I even knew it at the time. Okay, now I am thinking there were two.

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