Wednesday Poem

Reading Moby Dick –at 30,0000 Feet

At this height, Kansas

is just a concept,

a checkerboard design of wheat and corn
……………..

no larger than the foldout section

of my neighbor's travel magazine.

At this stage of the journey
……………..

I would estimate the distance

between myself and my own feelings

is roughly the same as the mileage
……………..

from Seattle to New York,

so I can lean back into the upholstered interval

between Muzak and lunch,
……………..

a little bored, a little old and strange.

I remember, as a dreamy

backyard kind of kid,
……………..

tilting up my head to watch

those planes engrave the sky

in lines so steady and so straight
……………..

they implied the enormous concentration

of good men,

but now my eyes flicker
……………..

from the in-flight movie

to the stewardess's pantyline,

then back into my book,
……………..

where men throw harpoons at something

much bigger and probably

better than themselves,
……………..

wanting to kill it,

wanting to see great clouds of blood erupt

to prove that they exist.
……………..

Imagine being born and growing up,

rushing through the world for sixty years

at unimaginable speeds.
……………..

Imagine a century like a room so large,

a corridor so long

you could travel for a lifetime

and never find the door,
……………..

until you had forgotten

that such a thing as doors exist.

Better to be on board the Pequod,
……………..

with a mad one-legged captain

living for revenge.

Better to feel the salt wind
……………..

spitting in your face,

to hold your sharpened weapon high,

to see the glisten
……………..

of the beast beneath the waves.

What a relief it would be

to hear someone in the crew
……………..

cry out like a gull,

Oh Captain, Captain!

Where are we going now?

by Tony Hoagland