The ticket settles on my desk: a paper tongue
pronouncing “Go away;” a flattened seed
from which a thousand-mile leap through the air can grow.

It’s pure potential: a vacation-to-be
the way an apple is a pie-to-be,
a bullet is a death-to-be. Or is the future

pressed into it inalterably-woven between
the slick fibers like secret threads
from the U.S. Treasury? Is my flight number

already flashing as cameras grind and the newly-
bereaved moan? Or does it gleam under Arrivals,
digits turned innocuous as those that didn’t

win the raffle for a new Ford truck?
If, somewhere, I’m en route now, am I
praying the winged ballpoint I’m strapped into

will write on Denver’s runway, “Safe and Sound”?
Was my pocket picked in Burbank,
and I’ve just noticed at thirty thousand feet?

Am I smiling, watching the clouds’ icefields
melt to smoky wisps, revealing lakes
like Chinese dragons embroidered in blue below?

Lifting my ticket, do I hold a bon voyage,
or boiling jet streams, roaring thunderstorms,
the plane bounced like a boat on cast iron seas,

then the lightning flash, the dizzy plunge,
perfectly aware (amid the shrieks and prayers)
that, live or die, I won’t survive the fall?

Analysis, meaning and summary of Charles Webb's poem Reservations Confirmed

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Do you have any comments, criticism, paraphrasis or analysis of this poem that you feel would assist other visitors in understanding the meaning or the theme of this poem by Charles Webb better? If accepted, your analysis will be added to this page of American Poems. Together we can build a wealth of information, but it will take some discipline and determination.