Coming Home
I saw the plane land, confidently, smoothly,
bearing its burden of precious human beings with ease.
I saw its torpedo shape, its motherly outstretched wings,
its excited colours on the tarmac.
I saw it taxi gracefully to a standstill.
So many things I see and my spirit understands,
so I say what my spirit tells me.
This one thing my spirit struggles with:
a plane lands and it is no surprise to me
— what would I have them do? Fly forever?—
The passengers debark or deplane
—as they say, in a mangling of language—
They drag their luggage through the lobby,
they’re met by the people who have waited.
I wait, and all the people come and go,
speaking of New York or Los Angeles.
I wait and fear when you don’t appear.
You were on the plane, I know,
but Immigration is a monster
and Border control is such a bitch.
Eventually we meet, or are reunited really,
out on the footpath like two wandering stars
lost in a cosmos of people and complexities.
We meet, binary stars in a cathartic, explosion
that collapses into one, the accumulation of all we were.
My spirit doesn’t understand this,
I cannot possibly say it, I can only be.
You push your luggage in front of you,
the precious remains of a life surrendered
for this moment, and all moments that follow.
I surrender my spirit’s burdens,
its fears of fears, its hopes,
its expectations inevitably unmet,
the precious remains of a small life
surrendered with hardly a thought
—my spirit didn’t understand—
You scoop them all up, no burden, no thought,
and put them with your luggage,
the remains of our former lives.
You look into me, after all this time
my soul understands when you say
I’ll keep it with mine.
I’ve traveled a million miles
and never moved an inch.
I moved barely an inch
to travel a million miles
and come home.
