Mixed Nuts and Animal Crackers

Somewhere high above an undiscovered country of burned grass
Record temperatures speeding us forever hence
From the world of good manners and one hundred-four, no breeze by the bay
(bad manners and we’d be killing each other)
We know ourselves as air walkers, bargain-hunting consumers of miracles
Lightweight packers, book nosers, smartass phone addicts double-checking reality in the seat behind us,
Sitting tight inside a winged miracle, absurd on its face,
packed with items our captain with unintended accuracy calls “distractions” –
sleep, some sort of in-air TV, virtual games, a magazine full of products no one wants,
But none of these can match the appeal of the ultimate intimate temptation:
“Mixed Nuts and Animal Crackers”


We ascend, descend, re-send, disappear in the mist of overheated molecules,
The earth takes a deep breath and clears its throat below us,
spitting the dull smoke of humidity like a smoker’s cough
We find ourselves in a clarified world, the sea blue once more
the green trees cohere and reclaim their appetite for color
We’re blue and wild for the wonderfully seductive yonder,
glued to the windows, the hackneyed beauty of the reforming earth
admiring itself in the mirror of our admiring eyes,
blue-green Terra looking herself again
after the bad-hair anomaly of one hundred-four
Or we would be, surely, except for the altitudinous distraction of
“Mixed Nuts and Animal Crackers!”


They come to us on bended knee, on silver salvers
Borne by jeweled cherubim passing among the communicants
(You may choose one or the other,
Though neither is what it seems)
No single mind among the strapped and stimulated airborne
disputes the arrival of the elevated munchies,
The hostess with the host, the steward with the harvest,
Open-handed Ceres passing among us
The animals get cracking on their crumbly creature comforts
flying with the grace of winged beings from the bearer’s basket
The nutters get busy, they shake their trees, fruit falls upon their tongues
For we are the sons and daughters of the flesh-riven skies
We know who we are (all together!):
“Mixed Nuts and Animal Crackers!”