The
plane touches down
a
brief stop turns into a delay
then
a longer delay
one
by one, we trudge off
to
airport land
YYC,
YQR, YVR, whichever
We
wait.
Adults
stuck to leather chairs
Adults
stuck to screens
I see babies among them
sucking thumbs
sucking fists
they don’t have agendas
they aren’t stuck yet
waiting.
I spot a boy
an old-fashioned boy
with a ball cap on backwards
with rumpled clothes draped over
skinny elbows and bony knees
he swings his legs back and forth
as steadies his cell and sends off a text
He seems a boy in between
a
shade less free than the babies in slings
a
shade more free than the zombies on screens
he
is teetering
soon
he’ll learn that he is waiting
waiting
to
get back on a plane
so life will resume once again
Years ago, at the advent of the smart phone era, I ended up on a flight that had a long and unexpected stopover. It quickly became apparent that we weren’t going to be moving on so quickly. This rather long and unplanned delay seemed to have an interesting effect on the passengers. It was if their lives had genuinely stopped once the plane had stopped, and that their lives would start up again, when they were up in the air and moving towards their destinations. I sat in a chair, and wrote down what I witnessed.
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