Outside and the blue below,
forming and vanishing slits of white:
the Pacific Ocean.
Always that moment
deep into the fifth hour
going on the eighth
when a settling has overcome
my upright seated body.
My eyes rest on nothing
but space through the rounded window
and the air is measured into fractions
of slow streams of manufactured
and faster streams of recycled
so the act of breathing
becomes efficient and ultimately sedating:
sleep encouraged,
jet lag a bitch.
Must be heavy, the middle of the ocean
so thickly seen from such a distance,
the idea of weight and water unsettling
that settling in my bones.
And deep into that liminal space of Home
and home, where definitions interchange
depending on which memory sticks
with momentary greater force
there is falling,
something slight though real enough
falling in my gut.
I’m thinking hard metal crashing liquid
death and sink but no pain
my body floating
the outside inside
the cabin a wreck of salt water
and bodies, fodder for fish.
I smile out the window. I settle.
Think that it would be fitting
to be buried somewhere between;
no earth has ever been mine to claim.