And now for something completely different -

Thought I'd give ya'll a bit of poetry today -

Linear Motion

Black bags lined up in the road

waiting for their people to find them and move on

Brown dog sniffing long lines of black bags

 looking for that special something

someone always tries to bring back in country from R&R

Sand and heat, a haze over the airport

I swore I'd never leave your side for again

Here I sit on the bus waiting to line up

to go up country again

Fruitful search to find my bags

then on line again into the Terminal

Passing through Security –

Boots off, pockets empty, pants held up by a prayer

through the metal detector

Grabbing my stuff and drag it all to the end of the stainless steel slab

contorting to get redressed

while keeping in mind local

paranoia involving shoes 

Line up one more time to recheck the other checks,

then on to the gate

to wait – 0800 in the morning and its already

80 degrees and climbing inside the terminal

Sweat and doze, waiting on someone to say the Magic Words

Flight time and one more line to recheck that we're not smuggling Dinar

we could only have gotten in the terminal to Al Asad

The air on the flight line is dry and hot a dragons kiss with no promise of resolution or restitution

SAAB built prop driven chariot awaiting us in the haze of dust, dreaming of the gentle lands of the north

We board to fly north by north west

Sand so thick in the air it can be walked upon we travel onward skimming through the haze sometimes above it sometimes in it headed for an Oasis where we will work for the next year

Circling once at our destination, we return to

Baghdad, the landing conditions not right

Just so we can do it all again tomorrow.

If anyone is interested, its from Dusk at Tikrit by yours truely.