A little bit of magic isn’t it, poetry, flying.
Ruth Stone writes:
‘In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
To the back porch
And slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
Telling me something;
Saying something urgent.
I was happy.’
I used to be terrified of flying, would break out sweating as soon as I stepped onto the plane. My fear didn’t stop me from traveling, but it felt like a miracle every time I arrived at my destination safely. I marveled that anyone would choose to work as a pilot or flight attendant: what a crazy suicide.
When I grew tired of being afraid, I started reading books on flight, the inner workings of planes, the job of the pilot, the jobs of the flight crew. I read about the physics of flight, how planes launch themselves into the air, how they stay aloft, how they land. And still, I return to this: magic. I’m no longer afraid of flying, but I still think of it as magic. A little bit of miracle.
‘The green apples fell on the sloping roof
And rattled down.’
And poetry, also: magic. Hard work, yes, hours of dead-ends and deleted lines, stacks of discarded paper to fold into the compost bin. But sometimes, a spark, a something that launches you into the air, that moves you in a new and unexpected direction. Sometimes something magical.
I usually bring silly things to read while flying, magazines or popular novels, things that don’t require too much of my brain so when I lose a page to announcements or a loud seatmate, it doesn’t matter. This trip, I brought back issues of Poetry Magazine. I read Ruth Stone.
‘The wind was shaking me all night long;
Shaking me in my sleep
Like a definition of love,
Saying, this is the moment,
Here, now.’
‘This is the moment,’ I read at 30,000 feet. And ‘I was happy.’ And ‘Here, now.’
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Planet of the Blind 