Looking down on the night-world ✈️

A poem about taking a redeye flight on a clear night. There were cool lights.

Redeye

The lights distended on the plain
Viewed from the redeye’s dark and height 
Are constellated just the same
As Nature sutured on the Night.

Most but a point, but some arranged
In galaxies of city lanes,
Static—but for shooting stars:
Headlamps on the moving cars.

Unlike the sky’s, we do not use 
These lamps as ends, but as a tool
To broaden sight. Unlike those guides
They are not, but they show the signs.

Unlike the norm, now I am raised 
Above their scope of usefulness,
I value them as astral art:
Not what they do, but what they are.

Explanation

The speaker is flying in a plane over a vast expanse of space. He sees the lights of cities, and the earth is very dark, so the city lights look like constellations. 

In stanza 2, a lot of the lights, the speaker notices, are alone—as in, just the light of one farm house—but some look like entire galaxies clustered together. They notice some moving ones, cars, that look like shooting stars.

The speaker contrasts city lights with the stars of the night sky, in stanza 3. He remarks that the lights in the sky have no purpose; we don’t practically do anything with them. The lights on earth, by contrast, are practical things. (This, of course, isn’t entirely true: people use stars for navigation, divination—but the contrast serves the poem.) We appreciate the former for their beauty, the latter for their function. 

However, since the speaker is in a plane, staring down on city lights, and contemplating their beauty, the standard role of city lights is inverted. They appear to him as “astral art”—as lights to gaze on, not to do anything by. 

Marijke, when reading this, notes this: “The speaker is in between the two spaces, the city and the sky. They are in a liminal¹ space, brahhh.”

Context of writing

I was taking a redeye flight from Vancouver back to Toronto, and had a window seat which is unusual for me. I watched the cities and towns pass underneath the plane. The night was very clear and I was struck by their shapes. I have seldom, if ever, taken a redeye.

I looked for two hours down at the passing cities, nearly half the flight. For some reason I didn’t get bored of looking at them. They were so bright against the Stygian² earth that held them but that was unseen. You only knew the earth was there.

We descended at around 6:30 am. There were, consequently, many cars and trucks on the road. I laughed at how miniature they looked, like little claymation toys on an animator’s set.

This last sight made me think of the insignificance of human activity, which seems so large. This was not a disturbing thought, though, but a relaxing one. 

Marijke’s thoughts on this: “maybe seeing the insignificance of humanity, rather than the fear of falling from the sky, is the real reason people are afraid of flying.”

Lesson

Ok, two lessons.

1. Stop and look out at the world, you never know what you might see.

2. Don’t freak out that the totality of human activity is negligible on a universal scale. It’s not a big deal, and can actually be pretty chill if you just accept it. Humanity just stays in its tiny lane and does it’s best.

Do you have a cool memory of flying you want to share? If you click through to the website you can tell me in the comments.

Thanks, 

Torben 

1. “Being on both sides of a boundary or threshold”; this word makes me laugh because poets constantly title their books and poems ‘liminal’. Just google “liminal poetry book” and you’ll see what I mean.

2. “Very dark,” as in as dark as the River Styx, the moat of Hell in Greek Mythology.