Departure Lounge - Jan 17 2025

 

Departure Lounge

Jan 17 2025

Between flights

I sit in a low-backed chair

with my knees almost touching

and nowhere to rest my head.

I squirm uncomfortably,

carry-on

clutched on my legs.

Somewhere in the middle

of a long row of chairs

made of faux black leather

and bright chrome tubing

welded together and bolted in place.

Where the armrests

have been cleverly placed

so there’s no stretching out,

no stealing a little sleep,

no hogging

the scarce seating for oneself.

The smell is fast food

cut with cleaning product.

A faint scent of jet exhaust

leaks in,

while the heavy perfume

on the lady across from me

sets off a coughing fit,

drenched

in its cloying floral odour.

Innocuous music plays

between announcements

in accented English and immaculate French

in a woman’s sonorous voice;

a language

in which even arrivals and departures

sound seductive.

There’s a hum of conversation,

the whine of planes

throttling up and down the taxiway

and roaring overhead.

I sit, alone with my thoughts.

No unattended bags.

No snappish complaining.

No chance

time will pass

fast and pleasantly

amidst the rolling delays

and irate fellow passengers.

So just how much of life is waiting?

Between planes.

For luck to change.

To finally find

where life has taken you,

which is rarely where you imagined.

I often think of this

— of life’s contingency,

the unintended consequence,

the folly

of best laid plans —

when, as we prepare to land

the flight attendant

announces we’re approaching

our final destination.

Final, I think

and imagine another kind of terminal.

One with no disagreeable smell

cramped seating

or planes to catch.

No more waiting

for time to pass.

And certainly no departing from.

An ominous thing to hear

in a heavier-than-air machine

20,000 feet

above the ground.

Again, what set me off on this was something I happened read that left me with a single still image: the start of a riff, with no idea where it would take me. So how telling that once again I end up at death. Perhaps not an unusual preoccupation as one gets older. But still, it would be nice not to be quite so morbid (or at least not to appear so, even if I irredeemably am!)

Although this may also have been influenced by a podcast I just heard about the 1977 Tenerife airport collision (on Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales): the worst loss of life ever in such a disaster. How from one second to the next life blindsides you, rudely interrupting every expectation, every presumption of normalcy. Always, of course, when you least expect it.

Uncounted years ago — 15?, 20? — I wrote a poem that also played with the ambiguity of this same rote expression: final destination. It would be interesting to see if I can dig it up from where it’s interred deep in the archives and compare: have I learned something in all that time; am I a better writer now? I definitely think so. But you never know!

Of course, I’ve often revisited the same theme/idea/image. Nothing wrong with having another stab at it and finally getting it right! (Or at least better!)