Flying at Night
The noise eases my mind—or clouds it.
I’m never sure which.
Like static, it plays behind my ears,
settles inside my brain somewhere
between coils of chat-room drama and violated agreements.
Maybe it’s the deep rumble,
or maybe it’s because I am dangling above the earth,
but the tangles loosen a little. I can sometimes
see hints of sunrise even in black night.
At times like this, you want to ask the wispy woman behind you,
“Excuse me, are you Joan Didion.”
Or the rapper just ahead if he commutes to LA or Montrose.
Borders mean nothing up here.
Limits have their bounds in such open space.
But we are all strapped in hard seats at midnight,
bottled and primed, unsettled, wondering,
not like the farmer asleep in his bed miles below.
If you have a couple drinks, you mourn your mother.
Or fret about what to say to your wife.
Or wonder why your fantasies run dark.
Did Einstein ever say whether dark matter
is a solid fluid or an empty box,
forsaken or redeemed?
I have canceled magazine subscriptions at moments like this.
I have reviewed my life’s goals.
I have shuddered at the thought of ancient rites still within me.
I have wondered if Jesus would recognize me
when I am flying at night.
• • •
Consider Sleep
Sleep and I hook up now and then, a few hours maybe. Heavy breathing, nothing more.
No one wants to admit sleep is a dry-run for death—morning light, the resurrection. Unless you have been awake since 1:00 a.m.
Once in a hotel in New Orleans, I thought the bar hostess wanted to take me home, but she only needed a ride. She laughed when I asked her to be my pillow.
My grandma couldn’t sleep when we stayed at a motel across from the penitentiary in Deer Lodge, Montana. She looked out the window all night to make sure that no one broke out, or in.
I have slept in a round room near a noisy highway, cars every 15 seconds, drywall with water stains, heartburn shuttered in a roaring 20’s frame.
Sleeping in public spaces makes me jittery—a thief could rob me and run away with my coat or hat, a real thief. A sleep thief comes at night and stays.
Too little sleep can make you sick, moody. I have prayed to a god I never believed in, bartered in currency I never touched.
Sleep is not magic. Not chemistry. Not hormones. Not anxiety. Not a wanton lover looking to even up the score. It is all of those things.
• • •
Ronald Geigle is a writer living in Virginia. His work has been published in the Banyan Review, Tilted House Review, and Litbreak Magazine, and forthcoming in Alternating Current. He is the author of The Woods, a novel set in the Pacific Northwest during the waning years of the Great Depression. ronaldgeigle.com