Stanzas on an Airplane

 Look down at the city: cars bustling like ants, houses like postage stamps laid in grids on the grids of blocks broken apart by streets, narrow and wide, crowded and empty.

Each person, too small to see, in those cars and those houses, is living their life. Every one of those cars is going somewhere and everybody in their house is doing something. Most people are just going about their lives. Someone is going to the grocery store, someone is doing their taxes, someone is watching Netflix, someone is making lunch. But I’d bet that in one of those houses someone is cheating on their spouse, someone is getting thrown out, someone is bringing their freshly swaddled newborn home for the first time, someone’s business venture just collapsed, someone died in their sleep and remains undiscovered, and someone is loading a pistol to take their own life.

 

But look down at the city: cars bustling like ants, houses like postage stamps laid in grids on the grids of blocks broken apart by streets, narrow and wide, crowded and empty. The clouds float peacefully at your side, the leaves in the parks below have begun to change color, the cars continue moving slowly up and down the streets. Nothing beneath you matters nor can touch you where you sit.

 

In the coming months, though, your kitchen table will be covered in rejection letters from publishers, you will feel heart-broken, you will be hungry and hurt, it will feel like the universe is laughing at you. But think of the people in the airplanes passing overhead looking down at your city. They can’t see you among the cars bustling like ants, houses like postage stamps laid in grids on the grids of blocks broken apart by streets, narrow and wide, crowded and empty. They can’t hear your cries. They don’t care about your naïve ambitions. They don’t bother to shame you. There is no cause for embarrassment. Pick yourself up and carry on.

***

(Cuenca, Ecuador -- October, 2018)

This poem is similar in philosophy to my poem on the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Sometimes, we overinflate our sense of importance to the point where we're afraid to take risks because we worry that someone will judge us for failing or getting rejected. However, everyone is so busy with their own lives that they don't care. Go for it! If you fail, likely very few people will notice or have the energy to even care, and if they do care, it will be supportive, not judgemental.