Jewish Book Club discussion

Do you read poetry? Have you read any of Maxine Kumin's? This is one of her last collections.

I read this poem just after the news story last Wednesday about the Delta jet having to land without its front landing wheel.

FLYING, by Maxine Kunin

When Mother was little, all
that she knew about flying was what
her bearded grandfather told her:
every night your soul flies
out of your body and into 
God's lap. He keeps it under
his handkerchief until morning.

Hearing this as a child haunted me.
I couldn't help sleeping.
I woke up each morning groping
as for a lost object lodged perhaps
between my legs, never knowing
what had been taken from me or what
had been returned to its harbor.

When as a new grandmother
my mother first flew cross-country
--the name of the airline escapes me
but the year was 1947--
she consigned her soul to the Coco-
Chanel-costumed stewardess
then ordered a straight-up martini.

As they landed, the nose wheel wobbled
and dropped away. Some people screamed.
My mother was not one of them
but her shoes--she had slipped them off--
somersaulted forward. Deplaning
she took out her handkerchief
and reclaimed her soul from the ashen stewardess.

That night in a room not her own
under eaves heavy with rain
and the rue of a disbelieving daughter
my mother described her grandfather to me
a passionate man who carried his soul
wedged deep in his pants' watch-pocket:
a pious man whose red beard had never seen scissors

who planted his carrots and beets
in the dark of the moon for good reason
and who, before I was born,
rose up like Elijah
Flew straightaway up into heaven.

From her collection The Long Marriage and included in the above.