To Ireland, To Bethlehem

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.