Over St. John's, Newfoundland

Viewed from this godlike height, in this perfect dark,

St. John's, Newfoundland, looks like a map of itself

In some expensive coffee-table book - a pattern

Of brilliant orange and white and blue on black.

Certainly it looks more like a map

Than like an actual place where people live.

It's hard to conceive there are human souls down there,

Some thousands of them, asleep in the perfect dark.

* * *

Flying from Oslo last week, I sat beside

A nice young Tromsų man, who, as we sank

Toward Newark, gaped at the skyline and charmingly

Said (in Norwegian) "It sure is bigger than Tromsų."

His brother, he told me, lived out in Wyoming;

From there, they were driving to Baja California.

I could tell he'd never been this way before;

It was plainly the adventure of a lifetime.

* * *

How various we are, we mortal beings,

How blessed with a capacity for awe,

A craving to know the contours of our world.

And yet how easily we can be jaded!

The first time across the ocean it seems like magic;

Do it ten times a year and it's a commute,

As matter-of-fact as a rush-hour bus to Jersey

Or an after-midnight F train out to Queens.

* * *

And yet, as long as you live, you retain the ability,

Somewhere within, to glance out of the window

Of the jet that's speeding you away

From the place of your birth to the distant city

That's become, against all odds, your beloved home,

At the tenuous lines in orange and white and blue

That tell you you're above St. John's, Newfoundland,

And gasp at the infinite wonder of it all.