144 Comments

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.

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

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Thank you, Michael.

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Jul 3Liked by Sherman Alexie

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

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Thanks, Rachel.

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Jul 3Liked by Sherman Alexie

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.

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

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Jul 3Liked by Sherman Alexie

This. Thanks so much.

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Thank you!

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Jul 2Liked by Sherman Alexie

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.

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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.

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Jul 2Liked by Sherman Alexie

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

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Thanks, Linda!

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Jul 2Liked by Sherman Alexie

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!

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Thanks, Lisa.

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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

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Thanks, Ken!

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Jul 2Liked by Sherman Alexie

every word you write is a gift

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Thanks, Mary.

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Jul 1Liked by Sherman Alexie

Not an enjoyable mode of travel anymore

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author

And getting worse!

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Jul 1Liked by Sherman Alexie

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

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Thank you, Imola.

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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.

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

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Jul 1Liked by Sherman Alexie

I must say, you know how to build a poem, how to begin on one side of a door and come through another.

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Thank you for noticing the structure!

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founding
Jul 1Liked by Sherman Alexie

This cranky old lady turned to the two little girls who were relentlessly kicking the back of my seat and said that I would tell their mother! It stopped.

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I once saw a dude clipping his fingernails on an airplane.

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