Ocean meets Land, meets an ocean and the land, it’s parceled out, piecemeal from this high above, and everything at last — seems understandable: how they glide over whole green yellow smoky mirrored silver dead surfaces as if no one down there’s ever mattered, will ever matter, in passing, as passed, as if those people, if they exist and we have our doubts, exist only for the idea that the world, it’s greater than themselves — only an idea, though ours, too. Vert, luteous, the sprawling of awe. It’d been raining sideways earlier, or so, pit pat at a slant, but they’re lower now, and the sun shines, and they glide over morning again, through morning’s again, over the giving way of the measured to the unmeasured, the separation of the kept from the keepless, then back to the measured, again, the pieced together, the parceled and the green and the light, the — no way else to say it — awesome sprawl surfaced, as graveless. They’ll die here. Not yet.
They land on the Land, arriving now at the first of many gates, too many, too gated — then, begin to variously struggle their ways off, though there’s only one way…though the processes are infinite, near enough, the result is always the same; they’re taking stock of the underseats, then the overheads…overheard: the tips, the timesavers, the suggestions so helpful…they gaze around nervously, itch, scratch at themselves in wonder how they’re shelled, husked, they’ve deplaned, made it through; they stand with their suitcases, with their garmentbags, and their carryons, too, held between their legs; tired, they’re hungry and thirsty; and they’re complaining, they’re complaining already, always complaining; they’d paid so much for this, too much, were made to pay, to be here, to be here again, to arrive again here, which is where…after all this wandering, welcome, Shalom — and hour after hour, day after day, the planes keep coming and coming, circle then circle the circling, land.
Mister Smart on the plastic of the toilet he’s sitting, he’s still, his loud made inaudible above the din, let’s give thanks…he shifts on the seat, nibbles at the dried fruit, the apples and prunes, dates and figs, which he’d illegally smuggled onboard, then sips at the sink, which is kept on, or out of order: a goy used to spending so much of his time so disposed, disposing, he’s trained himself to turn the pages of his newspaper with the toes of a foot, thumbs out the hole of a sock, unkempt nail grazing the headline—
At an aeroport in New York, called La Guardia as it’s named for a goy who before he became mayor worked with languages and with speaking them and asking questions in them upon the Island they’d died on; in case you were interested, just so we’re clear — there in its provisional chapel, a goy whose identity’s being withheld because his collaboration here should ensure the acceptance of his family’s conversion, a Chaplain, of a species nondenominational, a minister to the transient, retained to soothe the aviophobic, the afraid to fly, stands alone in his modest makeshift plasterdom, his cubicle celled between toilets, M restroom to the right of him, W to the left, and reflects:
