The Aviator calls it "Heaven for Planes." As the clouds sort themselves into gills, into magnanimous stripes of sky, the Aviator is moved to point up at them. Within them whirl perfect touchdowns of thought, three-point notions taxiing into rows.

But here on the tarmac, I am waving my arms. With lights and painted lines pulled up in cupfuls, cradled where each trajectory now lies. And tracers and contrails give lavender light.

This woeful expanse--I cannot bring it to bear. Nothing left to launch, not even hangars. Not even divots, first scooped out by debris and wreckage, later by my fingers and nails. Lengthening fingers, torn-short nails. The pockmarks have lain insensate for well nigh years on end. There's nothing they match. I know: I've turned the map over, again and again. Cockpit recordings flutter past in unheard strands.

The airfield is an island, and I am stranded. The clouds unjustly float on. Potshots are not so fun anymore; the criss-cross strips, a faint, crabgrassed abstraction.

The abstraction is mine. The abstraction is this: that in a hopscotch push to the coast, a kind-hearted general will lob a depot dream. Airborne engineers will be inserted on lilacs, with wily, cache-funneling pipeline plans. Blacktop will steam and rivets run. The bustle will continue in precision and haste, until--first stirring seismically, then lolling, then turning, then rising with with all the ambition of flight, then pivoting upward, then lumbering, then with a beacon's towering--my body regains its untoward height.

Instead, with the pinging of coins, the spiteful clouds have begun to rain.