To Ireland, To Bethlehem

Connie Voisine

The plane is packed and over sweaty heads,

                         rumpled hair, the movie glows in the transatlantic nighttime

            murmur of priests and nuns and Riverdancers returning

home—a baby is cooed by an older mother, a boy feels

                          for his seat in the dark. I’ve read my books

            already, 2 days traveling, the difficulties

technical. I hate that money, says the priest beside me,

                           and he orders another scotch, his third.

            The Feast of the Epiphany tomorrow, he studies religious

journals for a message, writes in a notebook

                            impossibly small. We are having problems

            with sound, the flight attendant announces,

it is not your headset, and so the oceans swell in silence,

                            bright blue tumbles across the screen mutely, foam

            collapsing over a tiny nimble figure

but she darts through to a green glow,

                            sunshine through a veil of wave, her surfboard tense between

            her feet and the world’s largest ocean. Her ride

is long, impossibly long—her hips stay low, a friend

                              drops onto her wave and, together, they glide towards the shore.

             No music. Just water and that blue. I check the SkyMall catalogue

for something I might need and didn’t know. There are

                              reasons I am flying over the ocean, reasons I

              I wish I were sure of. Someday I might say, yes, I chose

him, and it wasn’t wise. Or maybe we’ll be old and

                          surrounded by our own. The screen flashes;

              the surf is wild, but the bright sky makes me whisper,

Hawaii, where nothing could be that beautiful

                          but is. The waves are bigger and she sets out, flowered

               bikini, hair pulled back in a serious bun.

But too soon she’s underwater, arms above her head,

                           spinning down into a champagne sea.

              The priest asks would I like some English chocolate. I say no

at first then say yes. I say,

                             how many Euros for the scotch? The baby Jesus

               is about to be adored by black men, foreign kings, in

fact, tomorrow. They’re stumbling, the Magi,

                         12 days across an ocean and through the desert.

                It’s hot so they must travel at night—

who wouldn’t? And there was that star, sudden and perhaps a sign.

                          We’ve already tried to get there once,

                I want to say to the kings. It’s cool in this 747,

which later the pilot will land with only one engine.

                          A problem with

                compressors. But what a sweet,

sweet ocean, and those few younger girls

                         who try to ride it. And what a night,

                warmed by the sun-shocked smell

of saddle and sweat, the strong breath of camels.

                          What carved, fragrant trunkfuls

                born across deserts and ready to be opened before an infant god.