Clouds like ice broken on the surface of a lake,
Shifting forms of Pangaea that gravitate towards the sun,
Light rising bright impenetrable and distant.
I wait with ease in the terminal in a plastic seat.
But in memory and in future and in other hearts
Is a tension—to get where you are needing to go.
When the crackling voice overhead imitates
The divine oratory and announces with finality,
“Flight 4552 to Dallas has been cancelled.”
You shift the baby from one hip to the other,
Her pedal-knob feet dig into your soft places,
And her hands pull at your hair as she pets you.
She coos, but you swat her hands away,
Struggling to focus on the attendant,
Who holds the next dozen hours in her hand.
“I must get home,” you try to explain—
Calmly—not so calmly—sounding so trite,
So unoriginal in your demands to be heard.
Behind you stacks the train of angry passengers
Unpassaged, like Jenga blocks that no one
Wants to fall but will.
You cannot break. You cannot lose your temper.
You wipe sticky jam from your cheek,
Clutch the ping-pong sized fist in yours,
And alternate between, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh,
And “You don’t understand,” shhhh, shhhh,
Shhhh. “I simply must get home.”
—Jessica Hooten Wilson
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Why the Death Penalty Is a Sore Point for Papal Authority
Pope Leo XIV marked World Day Against the Death Penalty, observed on October 10, with the following…
The Myth of St. Francis
At the beginning of his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis speaks of “an episode in the…
Job and Her
It is said that Job lost everything, but she has lost more. All her possessions—the money, the…
