Saturday, August 15, 2009

Life At 30,000 Feet

I wrote this on the plane home today on the Traverse City to Minneapolis-St. Paul. It's probably more draft than anything at the moment.

Life At 30,000 Feet

This vision of America
Geometric and crisscrossed
Broken by mountains
Rivers
Vast empty stretches
Not so empty when we look
Closer

Not from 30,000 feet

Up here we are stilled by sameness
Colors muted by high pressure
Sealed Plexiglas windows
Metal tubes of bunched
And crowded seats.

This is life at 30,000 feet.

Farmers' fields both square
and Round--
Roads parallel, straight, diagonal
A child's primer of shape
and design.

As distant from the ground
The seat beside us
What lives lived below
Unknown
As the lives
Lived
By those around us

We are all strangers
In the air, on the ground
Every moment lived
In the Hurried Rush

We hurtle through the world
Every life lived alone
Every life lived
At 30,000 feet.

Chris Kmotorka
8/15/2009
Traverse City to Minneapolis-St. Paul