Lifted from Kuwait, I think of home, trees
that cast shade on a lake where ducks glide and dip,
shake off excess water. The flight attendant
pours a dark stream of steaming Arabic coffee
from the long neck of a bronze pot
into my small cup on the pull-out tray.
Below, I see a brown plight of land with roads
that seem to go nowhere. The attendant confirms
it is Iraq, that soon we will be over Baghdad.
In seconds a dark plume of smoke snakes towards the belly
of the plane. The plane lurches, loses altitude. My cup
topples, floods over the tray,
burns my lap. I wince.
Young men and women in terror
right beneath me, maybe once thinking of a day at the beach
with families, taking a plunge into ice cold water
screaming for the joy of it: now their lives blown apart
while I’m served coffee 32,000 feet in the air.
I remember how they told me in Kuwait City
when I said this war deserves a big red F
not to say anything political to anybody.
Just be a happy American, a peaceful American,
smile. Life is good.
So I handed out seed packets of peace,
sunflower seeds that people snatched up quickly.
Except for one man who threw them back at me.
“Send these to Bush,” he said, “with my regards.”
My friend whisked me away to the fast photo at the mall.
She in her black hijab and abayah,
me with my fly-away hair, friends from opposite sides
of a world becoming less and less, in the flash
of a photograph our bright smiles sealed
in that moment of little light
