Pre-Boarding

Pre-Boarding


If this were only “normalcy”—

if the slight swing in the wind chimes
could be expected to last—

if the grackle’s barbarous cackles
could be recalled on demand
the way you recall your uncle’s red brush-cut
when he sat in his swivel chair
at the gas station—or the entranceway
to your mother-in-law’s
when the house was
overcrowded with her.

You want to be able to take
everything with you, whatever
the old saying says.
Two things can
occupy the same space at the same time—
screw the laws of physics!
There might be a sixth dimension,
who knows? The Greeks knew
that mathematics was magic, and magic
is as good as science at explaining what happens
before birth and after death—better so,
since scientific truth has to be
verifiable in a lab
and there are no lab coats in limbo.

Limbo is like that borax mine
in the east California desert. You picture it
the way William Blake’s England
is spelled “Albion”.
You picture the white cliffs of Dover
that you’ve never seen except in a poem
where a man and a woman
are looking out at the moonlight
150 years ago—

seems like just yesterday,
and yesterday just as far gone,
or maybe still waiting
in some enormous airport somewhere,
where all the dead left behind
wait
for those still alive
to arrive


Copyright © 2004 Joseph Somoza