BCN by IAD
I can feel the pull of life’s momentum when I walk down the concourse at the airport.
Normally that’s in Hartsfield, but today I’m at Dulles.
I pass through a sea of lives that I’ll never touch, apart from this second of passing—
this moment that we moved through this place on the Earth at the same time.
There’s a gravity that tugs on my heart in these moments.
I feel a part of my fellow man—
even though I’m passing through them like a solitary floating island.
Where are you going?
Who do you love?
Who did you lose?
Who have you found?
These are the questions that float through as I pass by red suitcase,
and green sneakers,
and brown eyes,
and fedora hat,
and purple hair.
Just people—
on gettin’ on their way to wherever they’re headin’.
I wonder if life comes at them the same way it comes at me sometimes.
Like a hot rock flung off the road by dump truck.
But ya just keep tootlin’ right along with a crack in my window.
I guess it’s not always like that though—
sometimes she comes atcha like an endless sea of stars,
in the tar pitch,
above the beach.
The kind my momma loves.
And you feel small,
like I do in Dulles,
on the way to Barcelona.
If I ever get to Barcelona—
I was supposed to be there yesterday,
but here I sit.
Maybe I’m supposed to be here.
Maybe this is the only place where these words could be written.
And that’s the dance.
The “one, two, three, turn.”
The one we’re all countin’ to.
The one we’re all countin’ on—
gettin’ to the gettin’ place.