Over the wide blue ocean
The puffy white clouds suspended,
Gentle wisps,
The deep azure sky above,
Beyond which, limitless space.
This expanse of blue,
Reminds me not of the sky-blue thread
And certainly not of the Throne of Glory
As the Rabbis would have it..
No, rather my own mortality,
And how little time we have on this glorious earth,
And how temporary is our existence,
How futile our self-imposed meaning
When compared with the majesty of nature.
In the daily grind of traffic
And the gray urban landscape,
(How we destroyed such beauty
For the sake of industry
And greed)
I have almost forgotten this.
Our culture in decline,
Surprised as to how predictable this is becoming
And how we thought we were immune.
But join as we must
The litany of great empires of past
The greed of their wealthy class,
The murmurings of the underclass.
The militarism and excuses for war…
The diagnostic pointers are present once again,
The loss of decency and charity,
The ridicule of education and erudition,
The acceptance of gun violence and state sponsored police brutality,
The spawning of lies from the top down.
From 6000 feet it all seems remote
This miracle of flight,
This steel bird gently purring across the great sky blue,
In the comfort of these seats,
Sipping a Bloody Mary (so early in the day!)
Her liquid redness in stark contrast to the blue outside.
It seems almost irrelevant,
Away from the tumult
And few minutes respite from CNN,
As if, we are in church
On a spiritual odyssey
As if…
This flight..
Is meant to teach and instruct
To provide a hint
To the infinite oneness beyond
The invisible -yet soon to be revealed- galaxies at night
Of our meagre lives…
And…
Perspective.
In the bigger picture
We must not lose sight of our commonalities
With each other
With nature
With the opposing parties
With people of opposing views
With difference
With ethnicity
With sexual preference
With class distinction
With wealth.
In this wide expanse
We are a tiny fleck
In history
In geography
In time.
