Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 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
from Donkey Gospel
Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota
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
from Donkey Gospel
Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota