Airplane Ride

You used to be an ocean -
now, craters and dust
and hills whose stripes go the wrong way,
geologically speaking.

I see your high water mark
and feel the fear of my plane going down in the was-sea
and all of us — people,
the three cats aboard,
our luggage, the coffee —
all of it being snapped up out of existence
by a long-dead, long-toothed
beast of the deep.