PLANE

The sun is to the right of us, and of course above, and I'm sitting on the left side of the plane, which casts a tiny bead of shadow on the ground. The shadow behaves like a dog, running along below us, trying to keep up. It's tongue is flapping out the side of its mouth as it cranes its neck to keep us in its sight. We hit a patch of cloud and suddenly the shadow is much closer and much more articulated, clearly a plane now. The cloud diffuses as we fly through it and I flinch, fooled for a second into thinking we will make contact with the other plane, the dog, our shadow.