Riding the clouds will never be normal & yet it is
Weaving through wisps & billows of condensation in the sky in a big machine
Like it’s something ordinary to elevate ourselves above the clouds
Sometimes the wings shake like they’re going to break off & I think of episodes of Mayday on Discovery Channel & what my parents would do if I died
I don’t want to be scared of things like that
I also don’t want to minimize the magnitude of things just to be less afraid
I don’t want to diminish the extraordinary just so my days are easier to digest
A giant vehicle made of metal filled with bodies & the brains & hearts therein lifts us up into the atmosphere & keeps us alive at this altitude
Always going somewhere where I will see those horrors & wonders I’ve been kept from all these years, or back to that place of safekeeping: home
Women carry 30 pounds of laundry on their heads down to the river below
Children walk through Cholera & Typhoid laden streets barefoot
The ocean kisses the shore goodbye but the moon convinces her to come back again & again & condemns her to restlessness
Trees bear fruit so those without means can eat just a little & the man without much still tastes the sweetness of living as he chews on his sugarcane in the heat of the day
Machete cuts through limb of tree & man though I’ve been blessed to never witness the latter
Milk swells the breasts of the Mother so the baby can survive
Orphans laugh & widows smile…isn’t that enough of a miracle?
The smell of fried dough & labor fills the streets at noon because they always make something out of nothing
Mountains exalt themselves above the valleys & hold the sunrises on their shoulders proudly
Insects carry on with their day & don’t know they’re small
Circadian rhythm pulses on
And God put oxygen in our lungs just then
I don’t want to lose my wonder at these things
I don’t want my senses to be mute; I want them to scream
To feel it all as much as I can before I have to leave it
