“The Visitation,” “The Whys of Flight,” and “At the 24/7 Yoga Studio”

This morning the divine is wearing my Land's End robe

and demanding chai. It seems unwise to deny her appetite,

given I don't often wake up with her, but usually spring

from my bed like some ludicrous toy that hones

my own craving for my gray comforter and smooth sheets

I need to leave to come back to, famished, the way I wait

to wash my salty yoga mat, alchemize from pheromones

to frankincense. My constancy, like hers, not discipline,

but devotion; the void turns into its object, an infinite recursion.

I brew her a cup and one for myself that I drink from my best mug,

marbled in ochre and blue. Today, I refuse to go hungry.

Why is security —electronics, liquid, feet, pose—

different in every airport, every trip,

yet the Starbucks-adjacent escalator

 

to the C Concourse at ORD always

reeks cilantro though it’s miles

from any taqueria? Our flight attendant

 

used to be a cheerleader;

she keeps referring to the air as the                 sky

like it’s a visible and discrete destination.

 

No smoking in the sky! As we're in a town

on a map and not an aircraft,     enclosed.

I refresh my gum by reimagining it as custard:

 

cool and creamy topped with coconut whip;

adjust my bladder to shift it to a gentle presence,

nearly imperceptible, and wonder when people

 

like that youngish dude in 17C

self-deprecatingly call themselves old,

do they realize they are dissing

 

all their peers, present and future?

When my spouse asks the woman

on the aisle if she is going to the bath-

 

room, as if she’s wetting her seat

we both blink at him, momentarily confused

by the absurd and unexpected intimacy

 

of his poorly worded                   query.

They say that any given moment

a plane is likely to be off-course,

 

but, nevertheless, nearly always

lands exactly where planned,

a parable, I suppose,

 

about trusting processes

and the logical impossibility,

or at least avoidable possibility,

 

of wasting one’s time and life,

wisdom so easily forgotten

when touching the earth.