Miraculously Relaxed
If your therapist
were your fairy godmother,
magic and miracles
would flow from her wand
causing far less disturbance
passing through the air
than this Bombardier Q400
than this Bombardier Q400
turboprop, purportedly “quiet
inside and out…. (The ‘Q’
stands for quiet).” Its seventy
seats are almost all full
this evening. The cabin noise
and vibration suppression (NVS) system
doesn’t seem to be doing much good,
and the sneezing a seat or two up
continues. Still, I can confirm, giggling
quietly while I read the inflight magazine,
that their claim of “lowest fuel burn
per seat” is accurate enough. I rewrap half
of the turkey & cheddar on whole wheat
with seeds, all that the terminal Starbucks
had, and return it to the mini brown
paper shopping bag propped
in the corner of my tray table against
the wall and the back of 6D. I am
wedged in here, fifty pounds
overweight (well, twenty-five) though
I’d swear my original reservation was
for an aisle seat, always an aisle seat.
Wedged in here, I might like to know
the disposition of the world waiting
to receive me below. I’d like to
predict which movie my date will
recommend and whether our
prime minister will persist
in whipping the masses into a frenzy,
prepping the silver platter
to serve up another course. The scent
of cold cuts insinuates itself
through layers of brown paper
and reclosed plastic wrap. It is good
that the tall thin suit next to me picks
veggie chips off the cart
packed in their yellow-orange bag
that propels a pungent ripple through the air
when he pops it open. Food not shared,
bread not broken, love unrequited
on some lush terrain back on earth.
Whether the original author chose
to tell the tale of food
from the point of view of those
who control our resources or
to tell the tale of politicians
by means of the food they eat
in silence, literally avoiding
rubbing elbows for an hour
and a half between here and there,
the price of a ticket – movie, plane or
love, will take a fully-ripened
lifetime to earn and will be
appraised in light of whether
or not I wake up a day or so later
alone at 4 a.m. and decide against
turning the hotel alarm clock
one hour forward. Next,
a text message will arrive canceling
the remainder of our plans. Long after
we are gone, proliferation will continue,
at least for a number of years. When
will there ever again be two Hebrew-
speaking Ashkenazi Jews, a man
and a woman on a Saturday afternoon
in North America, holding hands,
miraculously relaxed,
viewing a Japanese film with not
a bag of popcorn between them?
