147 Comments

So poignantly captures the many thoughts and sensations of flying these days. A piece of art. Thank you.

Expand full comment

Excuse my reaching out here, but I don’t have an email for you.

I’ve been a reader of your work for many years; saw you give a reading in Cambridge, MA seems like a hundred years ago.

Anyways, my wife and I are visiting Seattle arriving late tomorrow and leaving Tuesday. Is there any chance we could meet with you, perhaps invite you (and your wife?) to a restaurant for a meal and conversation? It’s short notice, I know, but I’m taking a shot in the abyss, so to speak.

In any case, best wishes to you.

Michael Mudcat Ward

Text/cell: 617-218-7523

Expand full comment

Just love this deeply spiritual poem about forgiveness and compassion and patience and mortality and atheism and vulnerability in our current collective mundane mode of travel.

Expand full comment

Yes

Expand full comment

Thanks!

Expand full comment

Painfully true about contemporary flying!! Beautful poem. Our contradictions, our self lies, our denial, our goodness, love and joy. All at 30,000 feet.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Michael.

Expand full comment

Wonderful! Here's to odes about airline travel and talking to oneself by way of God as a metaphor.

Expand full comment

Thanks, Rachel.

Expand full comment

Just flew from Orly to LAX and yes to everything you’ve written. I’ll add an ode to the people who did not lose their minds over a 3-hour delay and to the mom whose baby was wailing in the airport long before the flight began. This was beautiful.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Ally. O, the stress of being the parent of that kid!

Expand full comment

This. Thanks so much.

Expand full comment

Thank you!

Expand full comment

According to the book of Genesis, the beautiful rainbow 🌈 symbolizes God’s promise to never again destroy the earth with water. (In other places God says he will use fire next time.) But before the Flood, humanity grieved God by their inhumanity. I wonder if our ever-increasing love of violence will bring that second and more permanent destruction.

Expand full comment

It's difficult for people across the political spectrum to accept that the world is a better place now than it's ever been. One of the most positive measures of that is that worldwide infant mortality rates are much lower now than they've ever been. The Internet bombards us with the worst possible views of the world.

Expand full comment

Dear Holy Unholy Man , God’s heard every word and if not, it’s because He’s busy and is counting on your keen Attention

Expand full comment

Thanks, Linda!

Expand full comment

Beautiful! Thank you so much for this. I've been traveling and have a flight home in a few days and this will be in my head and on my mind. "Here's to all the indignities/of our travel through the physical/and spiritual world." Indeed!

Expand full comment

Thanks, Lisa.

Expand full comment

Deep bow

of appreciation for

this and all travel poems that

sing of the sting of TSA shouts

and garbled instructions to

elders with more than three

point five ounces of hooch

and no boot-jacks for the too-

small Naconas at the insecurity line.

Thank you,

Sherman

Expand full comment

Thanks, Ken!

Expand full comment

every word you write is a gift

Expand full comment

Thanks, Mary.

Expand full comment

Not an enjoyable mode of travel anymore

Expand full comment

And getting worse!

Expand full comment

So recognizable. I’ll think of this poem next time I’ll be lucky to fly.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Imola.

Expand full comment

Now this is a song from a state of enlightenment. Which is a process (as we are processes) rather than an end because the work of enlightenment won’t end until we end. But enlightenment = aspiration + work and you are definitely doing the work.

Expand full comment

It's far easier to do the work on the page than it make it real off the page. But I try!

Expand full comment