Flight Path
July 22 2009


Living under the flight path
is a distraction, at first;
‘til soon, you stop noticing.
But thoughts of departures
of flight
of taking-off,
pre-occupy you, nevertheless.

There are steep ascents
under full throttle
rattling windowpanes and cutlery.
There are landings at night
that make your gut clench.
Bright lights appearing out of darkness
from over the adjacent low-rise,
indistinct rumblings,
then this great gleaming creature
directly overhead —
arms outstretched
landing gear grasping
the thrusters’ ear-busting roar.

Where a row of windows
like a string of festive lights
encloses a small orderly village
of convenient strangers,
sipping drinks
in the muted glow
of the oddly still interior.

So much coming, and going.
The strained smiles of seat-mates,
the great airport concourse
where important people hurry by.
You listen from your modest bungalow,
imagine picking-up
lifting-off
rising above
this earthbound melancholy,
so high
the sun always shines.

You will descend
eventually, of course,
through the clouds
into turbulence,
over the brightly lit node
of some unfamiliar town,
nod at your seat-mate
and go.
You will find a place
with the sound of planes
and the scent of jet exhaust,
where you will settle down
among convenient strangers.

Until the restlessness
grips you again.



I think what this poem is about is the delusion of escape; the notion of salvation somewhere else; the idea that others have bigger lives. It is the false promise of the journey itself that seduces him, the fugue state, the taking flight: where he "rise(s) above/this earthbound melancholy", and "the sun always shines"; where he demurely rubs shoulders "in the muted glow/of the oddly still interior."

His disappointment is foreshadowed in the 2nd stanza -- I hope not too clumsily, or too much over-written -- by the rather mercenary and visceral personification of the plane.

It is because of this false hope that he never commits; and so repeatedly finds himself living marooned among "convenient strangers", no more intimate with them than one is within the transient artificial intimacy of an airplane fuselage.

This poem had its seed in a brief image from a DVD I recently rented: dusk; the low rent part of town; a blaze of light in the sky, and an airplane suddenly appears, sweeping in low and loud and menacing. I immediately had the impression of it as a living thing. And there was this sense of stark division: the low-rise people trapped on the ground; contrasted with the freedom and escape offered up by the flight path -- so inaccessible, yet so temptingly close.