Air is what the sound creates.
We pass through it without damage.

I have always left my voice behind.
Words pass through it.

Abandon, abandon.

Above the storm, and much-delayed
is the deliberate light.

All air is hard air.

There’s a storm in the Gulf and another
winding itself up in the Pacific
and the continent is squeezed into a funnel
through which we all eventually disappear.

If you put the air into the machine
it will make you anything.

It will make you butterflies.

Flying blind. The instruments click
with their representations.

In the thick fog the six-seater seems motionless
no matter what you know.

There is no magic in the thick cloud
and yet, the plane flies itself.

Then we’re though the pass and the fog lets us out
happy to be rid of our suspicions.

We approach low, just over the ski hill
where they’re still making artificial snow.

The stars can’t escape.
Look at them out there, with all their gases.

Somewhere in that apparat
they are making air

and shipping it to earth
and all we have to do

is keep them supplied
with our disbelief.

Back when they used to serve meals on planes
I liked the moment when the food trays arrived
because it seemed to signal that it was ok to talk.

All along the column of the plane
the volume of conversation went up to match
the rattle of plastic and icecubes, and the lids
peeled back from the microwaved chicken
like band-aids.

And afterwards everyone would pull
the window shades and try to nap, wishing
that everyone else would shut up.

Overnight again, over the north Atlantic
And as usual, I can’t sleep.

I’ve gotten up to stand in the rear galley
even tho the plane is all bedtime.

The attendants are dozing in the back seats
with wires draining their ears, except for one.

She has brought a plate full of
still-warm chocolate-chip cookies back from first class.

Help yourself, she says. And I do.

I eat them all.

I could be smuggling anything, I suppose.
I had forgotten about the slice of Air Canada pizza that was served just an hour before we landed, coming in from Brussels, and since I wasn’t hungry I just left it in its little cardboard box and stuck it in my briefcase hoping to eat it later.

No such luck.
The perky little beagle they use for a sniffer dog in Ottawa trotted up to my luggage and barked at it, once, and delicately, and although I explained that it must be the pizza, the guard just smiled and said please go through that door over there.

Well, who’d be dumb enough to want Air Canada pizza
for later anyway? Quite a few it turns out. Through the opaqued glass door there were fifty people ahead of me and at the only counter they had open there was already a stack of confiscated pizza containers and they were calling in more help to keep the line moving.

I did wonder for a moment if it really was the pizza, and whether there was anything else I had forgotten or if someone had stuck something into one of my bags without me knowing and god knows what was in them now. That’s what makes coming home so exciting, you realize that you can’t keep everything.

By the time I got to the counter it was routine. I already had the pizza box out but they had to look through things anyway and there was that little box of
Elisabeth chocolates I was bringing home for you. The ones with
dark chocolate drizzled onto fine slices of tangy orange.
They said it was fruit, and they took that too.

I’m right at the back of the plane and the window seat beside me is empty.

The woman coming down the aisle, sideways, is large. She is carrying a closet-full of shopping bags stuffed with what might be shoes and discount fashions, if logos mean anything.

There are a couple of other empty seats on the flight and she leans down to glance at them but I know she’s going to end up beside me.

I am trying to think of a way to discourage her, of making the seat look occupied, not that it would make any difference.

An attendant helps her put some bags into the overhead bins wherever there’s an empty space, so that she is distributed here and there along the aisle.

She’ll have to re-aggregate herself when we land and I’ll probably have to wait behind her forever.

Yes, I know how uncharitable this is. Airplanes make me uncharitable.
And my punishment is coming.

The woman is moving down the aisle, slowly. She stops to chat
with someone she apparently knows and I wonder if there might be a more comfortable seat for me to move to but they’re all about the same.

I don’t really want anyone to chat with, I just want to read and put my elbows up on the armrests every now and then. And maybe a bit of sleep.

Ah well. The unavoidable lady has arrived. I’m already standing up to let her in.
She makes me look thin, and when the attendant touches my shoulder

and says there might be a more comfortable seat up ahead
I just shake my head and say, it’s ok, I’ll stay here.

These poems are from an unpublished collection entitled Air Miles.