air machine

i'm in an air machine over another southwestern desert

the aluminum tube wherein,

i'm contained discloses its identity

by it interior curved walls

and relative claustrophobia

the great cylinder shudders as it takes in great gulps of air

into it's cavernous maws, two

each suspended under the wingspans,

the height of man,

which can easy suck the same man in,

or wayward birds,

as it does the great gulps of air

while ejecting the same,

tormented air

in twin narrow streams of

heated thrust,

by which we rise

for the ride

to 37,000 feet

it's smooth as melted ice over desert heat up here,

over the mexican peninsula of baja

that's far below,

to the surreal reflection

of silver and beige

we call sea and land

the feel if you've never been,

is like floating in a hot air balloon,

though we're moving,

500 miles or so,

each hour

through my starboard port,

crop circles rise to greet my gaze,

artistic green, humans made

to break the monotony of grey and black

on the ground for us to see from a special height

the scar and twist of rough terrain

is deceptful i know,

because it seems benign

this floating ride on air,

it does not indicate otherwise

than harmless and smoothness down below

is but illusion,

for reality is at the ready

to barge right in

and rage against my sensibilites,

given opportunity to fulfil the axiom

named murphy's law,

if say,

we were to lose the flow of fuel

with sputtering

if say,

due to mechanical malfunction

due to,

say,

negligence by an errant,

land based

fuel dispatcher,

the fragile wing

on the starboard side is mine to view

i'm seated inside,

strattled above it,

slightly, about ten feet or so,

its seams,

its lines of support and guidance flaps, that move by computer, or manual overide

keep me intrigued to stare,

it flutters ever so,

and sometimes a bit agressively,

with turbulence,

that makes flutters to my heart as well,

which at any moment could turn violent,

could skip a beat

could,

due to the turbulence,

that vibrates ever and ever more,

as the invisible desert heat meets

the cold,

due to high altitude fronts we are flying in

the flutters keep an irregular tune of apprehension,

that waxes and wanes, with the steady hum of the mighty engines

herein the din of sporatic harmony,

keeps time with tension of the imagined,

or the real

prospect of impending disaster,

even as the sporatic hum breaks into lesser engine revolutions,

whose power thresholds i'm not privy to

that instills reminiscence of failure,

as in the malasia flights,

one and two

their memory roaring in my popping ears,

while forcing tearing, metallic sounds into my head

tearing into my skipping heart,

breaking these thoughts into erratic bits

and fragments,

and mental flutters

at the thoughts,

of falling,

of counting eternal seconds

of minutes before

crashing

upon the earth

along with me

and the passenger in seat 12 c

across from me

perhaps,

whose stoic, sultry face,

conjures images of the underwear bomber,

or the shoe bomber,

whose soles contained disaster,

and worse

the tubular shell of this magical craft

is obedient to the laws of physics,

its horizontal fins stabilized by bernoulli's law,

its tail fin is slicing above the whole contraption, unseen

yet there by faith,

even as the trusting passengers read or doze,

or breathe,

or move and twitch,

along with millions of other individual, component parts working in diligence,

that make the plane,

that keep us aloft,

that obediently react to those laws by pain and grace

were only one component to fail,

of all the million the craft comprises,

all it would take,

just one,

just a vital one

is all

i swallow

and with it hear

all the more clearly,

i all the more clearly see,

the veins of green below

suggesting a slight and temporal comfort,

i vicariously now,

i feel

to the earth bound people moving there

we fly serene,

with machine

with the view

to below

from high up here

another zone

a different dimension

with geography

that's reminiscence

of what i've learned by maps,

and walking on the ground on hikes,

embeddeded in the past earth bound

by the stark of aridness,

enveloped in beige

of earthen HEAT

thete is

life nonetheless in that place

that mingles with the recall of my own bruises

incurred by the falls in that terrain

borne with the pain by gravity's push and pull

meanwhile, i've escaped in a sea of my own blue

i see rivers running through,

and on,

across the face of earth,

steaks of color green,

life unseen there from here

life up here walking in the narrow isle

walking in the clouds, oblivious to them

unless we, of course should break their folds

by a sudden break into their space

by a sudden hurling, downward from above,

rudely forced into their domain

how fiery Hot

if of a sudden,

our emotions,

of our fear combined,

how violent our reactions,

coalesced would be,

if,

like the internal combustions of the jet engines,

if from on High's airy altitude,

from above the clouds,

we would suddenly appear,

burning in malfunction's Heat,

to river valley denizens, down below,

if,

Oh, wondrous flying machine!

The wright brothers would swoon,

if,

they could have seen into the future!