Liminal Suspension
A poem that broke through...like an infection!
Departing from my usual monthly posts, I share here a poem “out of turn” so to speak, a poem that made its arrival on its own terms - as they usually do.
Liminal Suspension
I sigh deeply as I settle to lie suspended in this space.
Embracing found freedom, before the arrival,
and after the departure, I imagine myself lying free and alone in the sky.
Is this happiness or just relief? And a temporary reprieve?
In the sky so high I should be dizzy and deathly blue,
if it were not for this aluminum chamber.
Somewhere over the Pacific racing, flying away
from what feels like a home I used to have to my current “real” home.
*
Some people are afraid of flying, never me.
It does occur to me that this flying metal sac with several hundred humans -
fitted in seats and spaces like good little sardines,
who chose to put their faith in one or two fliers of this machine -
could crash and burn, taking us all down in a jumbled mess!
But it has never bothered me; if I had to go this way would not be all bad,
I am told I would be unconscious before much of anything struck.
Even “free fall” sounds like it's ...well... freeing!
Plus so many of us together...couldn’t be lonely.
I laugh at these wayward thoughts whizzing by! And at the probabilities
of this and the alternatives -- what would I do instead? Lead a caravan, ride a camel,
or sit demurely on a ship deck for months like they used to?
That latter option sounds like what a writer ought to do!
Oh the letters I would write you - pages and pages from the deck! I dream.
Perhaps it’s not wise to laugh, no need to tempt fates,
extinguisher voices in my head remind me.
*
Instead, I savor this feeling, this time after the departure
from what used to be a home but now with my lone, aging mother,
I leave behind with worry and fear of counted days and memories.
This time that comes before the arrival to the home I chose, I built.
Neither permanent, nor fixed with loves I chose,
but a feeling called “home” - not the brick and mortar perimeter in my name.
Yet this 15 odd hours I suspend in this metal balloon untethered,
becomes the most unchained of them all. This collection of cuboids separated
from the outer skies that I watch from my window - dark, serene, deceptive.
*
Treasuring this fragile liminal space - tender, temporal, emotional - where I rest,
having handed my fate over to the fliers of this bulbous machine.
Lightened in this surrendering of my fate, in how it feels so weighless?
No binding, no questions, no demands, no ambitions, no responsibility
I am forced to just be; succumb without aphoristic vows, as is. Just be, just be!
No obligations, no promises, none to be broken, none kept
In my little space where I sleep, eat and watch a screen uncluttered, disrobed
from duties, decisions, ambition, demands, bindings of every kind.
Love exacts. Not just fun and games. Love is grief, is pain, a hefty price tag.
I’ll think about that later, after I land, tomorrow, next time, when I’m back...
A suspension, a reminder that this is what it must feel like to be unburdened
To give over the reins of your life to another, a kind benefactor
Do we overrate autonomy? I think out loud
The woman in the next seat stares for a moment, until
we both look away confused. Did she agree or was she mocking, I wonder?
No. Her expensive, labeled bags tell me she’s not wasting time!
*
And I am wondering, wandering again…
Does this thing fly because it’s lightened by the decisions we finally made?
My brain wags a finger at my obtuse questions...
Bernoulli explained it all -- you at least remember that?!
But wait... I wonder if he missed something!
Did he account for us passengers that cut our bindings,
leaving them speedily trailing in the winds?
Is this thing buoyed because we collectively shed our burdens
leaving all that heaviness behind?
For until we land --
And we pick it all up at the baggage claim of burdens.
Sometimes I envy sheep!
***
Reena Kapoor
10/19/2021
I am an immigrant. I chose to make America my home a while ago. In that time my parents aged, and my father passed away. It all seemed to arrive overnight three decades after I left. Now when I go back to India in short, swift visits it is to see my mother, check in on how she’s doing, spend time with her, indulge in the memories of my childhood -- and hers. I worry for her. She is getting on in years and frailties and my visits are too short to be of much use to anyone. Unfortunately that’s all I have to give. My life here with all the love and bindings I have chosen to secure myself with is the only life I am barely fit for now. It’s the deal I signed up for when I first left India and the family of my birth behind, except that I failed to read the fine print. It’s every immigrant's story - not just mine. No regrets except I feel so weighed down by the love and its exactions on both sides that it’s a relief to get on the nearly 16-hour long plane ride from Delhi to San Francisco, where I use that time to refuse all the demands and worries on my mind. I set all of it aside in that liminal space and make it an interval of denial of all reality. I suspend myself in a brief reprieve for myself.
Then I land -- and on I go!
Only you, Reena, can include Bernoulli in a poem filled with ethereal images and lovely musings and make it work. You are such an engineer! And poet. ;-)
poetic venturi