Captain's Rounds

The world sleek and unreliable, especially at this height.
Only sunlit at a distance, the clouds burnished—an awful cliché,

he thought, wondering at the precision of it, how he noticed
at all. And smell, it became intense, not just coffee

but strange chemical scents buffeting his nose, demanding
recognition. Playgrounds, memories, what made him certain.

Hither and yon over rogue countries, laundering their memories
of anything, the rivers so beautiful, so dead they could be rope.

The clutter of headphones, menus, safety cards, a newspaper.
All the paraphernalia of travel, its manifest words on his lap.

Forgotten, and he does not ask questions, now, it is unsafe.
He confines himself to commerce, liturgical almost in what

he buys and how he flaunts it, content to swap memory
for mammon. He asks no questions because he has no past.

Distance gave you that, the whole dimension.
Eleven thousand metres over Russia, tracking for Heathrow.

page 90

The wide world, there in Bubba's pod, first class in the nose,
wine at his elbow, Rattle and Hum on the swing screen.

Jesus, that was nostalgia. Years ago he'd seen it, that
serious thing they did, as if the world were good for saving.

Bubba's conscience feeling good at this height, clean as the
jet stream at eleven thousand metres, perfect patterns spread out

below him where all the messy business was, a hundred bodies
just dots, one pixel and another, a scramble of pixels.

He knew he'd have it sorted before lunch, consulting the menu.
It was about finding the right language, taking the obscure

and making clichés, arranging parts into a new shape like lovers
finding what legs and the teeth can do. Confident, he was,

easy when you stand so high you hear nothing too loud
and what you see is only what you let yourself see.