First Light
MORNING flights are always interesting: in the early morning darkness, the click of a lock. Baggage turns its many circles on the conveyor belt. There’s a conference of councilors in town this week, so the plane’s filled with the foggy eyes of sleepy men, dozing off, seats on recline, while the sky turns from one moment dark, another moment: sudden light.
At the terminal, already, a guy leans against a car, at six in the morning, and is willing to wait. A woman sits on a chair and sleeps. Someone’s shoulders rest easy on an early morning wait for a trip that without surprise arrives on time, and already I know I’m home. Home where it is easy, so easy to smile. Where no time, is all the time, and is always enough. Where early in the morning, a nice jog, at a good pace, on a bridge, over ocean water is part of what is considered this city’s daily possibility.
And what is possible here? A good day. Someone to say one’s name and recognize the way back. This week, it’s a group of poets willing to wager what they choose to say on the tentative weight of one’s language. A heartache from five years ago. A widow who is unable to let go. A monobloc chair that does not heave under the weight of its age.
To the poet there is nothing that does not offer the possible of wisdom if not laughter. Not a taxi ride to work, or a day spent at home on the bed, or even lent. Every moment is potentially filled with grace.
The job of course is making sure that words survive the tenuous voyage from mouth to page. And the wrong word not digress. Or the right phrase give a certainty unwarranted. The task is that the promise of a night of silence facing a notebook, a computer monitor, be worthy of what is revealed in that quiet space called writing.
And the hope, of course, is that someone listens.
I guess I’m home in order to listen.