Underground Overground

Planning a conference trip to Paris, T is suddenly gripped
by a fear of being strip-searched on the Eurostar.
Will they take my knitting needles off me?
The polished brass website allays her trembling:
For packing into a metal tube squirting under the sea,
one should not bring unlicensed firearms, gasoline,
alcohol of more than 5 units, ammunition or CS gas,
knives over 3 inches long. Registered firearms,
crossbows, spearguns, sporting equipment
and swords are fine, but please leave them in the hold.

camp mirage

no one was supposed to know about it, the worst kept secret of a war. google earth had swept the desert and found its seacan huts. its bougainvillea window dressing. watered glassy Kentucky Blue grass. tables under linen canopies. mess hall. chapel. volleyball court. comms. the memorial wall. runway. breeze off the Gulf. the smell of heat after midnight. who could sleep knowing tomorrow, one flies into war.

Camp Mirage Camp Mirage

LAX

LAX became my home airport during the mid-eighties. It was expanded for the 1984 Summer Olympics. That was the year the Soviets boycotted, following the US-led boycott in 1980, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The USSR's withdrawal was followed by Bulgaria, East Germany, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Hungary, Poland, Cuba, South Yemen, North Korea, Angola, Iran, Albania and Libya. The Olympics were a dreary affair that year, without the Soviets, competition was slim, and in the uber-glitzy optimism of Los Angeles event after event seemed contrived and listless. It was the last Olympics I watched. Plans for enhancing the airport went on, despite politics, and LAX became a huge wheel of terminals around a four-lane throughway. Breathing the air on the way to the parking lot takes a year off your life.

YAQ

O Daddy
In The Mood
doo doo doo
da da da da
da da d da da
jivin' airman
she loved your eyes
Air Force Blue
only dated officers
'til she met you
Maple Bay
Nineteen Hundred
and Forty-Two!

EXT

The X in Exeter has an arrow streaming up
up and away, the ex of expel, excel, exit
but not expresso. The unarmed woman
across from me in the queue-blue lounge
has a strapped-on face, and bear’s hands.
Her flight delay has been extended again,
and her family of boys are sinewing up into
middle-school age. ‘In what catchment area
is this airport?’ she curdles. I attempt a potable shrug.
Her eldest manages the coffee shop, you know,
He served the coffee still causing that trouble.
I clutch my damply written novel to my stomach
and listen very hard to the A30 not moving by outside.

YEG

Arrive depart arrive across flat tarmac,
broken earth of a wide Canadian prairie
into the new found land of diesel
machine, and men in camo green.
Waiting in arrivals, my driver.
Tasked because he couldn’t zip his lip.
An entire desert in his long stare.
“Welcome Ma’am”, proffered hands,
“Are you good to go?”
Who knew? Who knew?
He, I, all of us swallowed whole
into diesel and steel Behemoth,
via flights through YEG,
a cup of Starbucks grabbed,
our feet slapped across tiles
shale, with ammonites embed.

SBA

Some years ago the Santa Barbara airport was small potatoes. Perhaps it still is. The main building had only one room with a ticket counter and two luggage bays. Upstairs, there was a tiny bar with large windows that looked out over the single runway. A friend of mine and I would go there in the afternoons, order drinks and watch the one or two planes that would land in an afternoon.