Runway to the gates

for Archie Moore

No nameless airport exists, no such thing as a run
of the mill town, though short layovers and hubs
feel otherwise — a city’s distinctions in the slipstream
of a conversation with the gal at the coffee counter,
her East Texas drawl landing askew, a reminder this is Dallas
and John Denver over the intercom and a polite prayer
service starting at 11 at Gate 25:  a town’s unique who am I
revealed by a slim denim vest top to form a frame
for muscular bare arms and interlacing midriff tattoos.
Similarities between cities could collapse into one eye roll
same ol same ol about long layovers and overpriced
bottles of water sucking our souls, delays delaying us
from where we want to be, but when we are grounded,
is when the particulars of inspired human
sparkle, where we can find what’s beneath the skin of that city:
Halloween time at San Antonio International means glossed
pumpkin ornamentation and remolinos of Dia de los Muertos
remembrances piled over armadillo plushies in the window
all to say this is Texas and we are draped in plastic ghost
garlands, and at the bottom of the arrivals escalator,
we have the boulder sized self-satisfied smiling calavera
saying this is you, traveler in the upper world, don’t you remember
your dead when you are not dead? And these dead coulda
been friends with the St.Louis pair of paper mache jazz playing
skeletons perched by Gate P-37, frozen with their top hats
bright painted trumpets hearing Miles and Armstrong,
knees in mid-syncopated step in their own Danza of the Macabre.
There’s no run of the mill airport before we all go over thirty
thousand feet into the heavens, see —where the cities do
disappear. Oh and Hobart and Port Macquarie, you,
you— no forgetting which of you welcomes us back with
your copper platypus sculptures or rain forest mural,
which one houses the little tassie
devils who play on a set of painted suitcases
near carousel 3, and how at Sydney international
28 beacon flags greet us saying you are here on this our country
Our unerased nexus of United Neytions,
Look, I know not all gates begin or end in glossy corridors
or where the carpet meets gangway meets the blue nosed 737;
I know not all gates open or close in that unlucky glance
that spots that your carry-on is, in fact, too bulky
but some gates can be a pearled and trembly smile
that confesses a collective fear, a fear-smacked gal saying it ain’t
natural to fly but I gotta see my sister (her love of rhinestones
deep as Livvy’s or Taylor’s). We’re all at the gates (of hell
or high water or heaven) after all—
the gate is the living luster: the birdcalls, an art installation
that makes you think, or that customer service agent
whose brow deepens into a long pair of grooves
on the otherwise flat topography of her brow
when she is in the hope of finding your new flight home.