I had my feet up on a couch at JFK, looking at the toes of my Airs
While we waited to see which plane
would take us far away
The hump-backed 747’s were lined up outside
one smaller jet in the middle
We were to fly all night across the sea
to a country that was new to me,
a place I had avoided until now.
Vienna calling, Falco said.
And how.
The UMD singers, my daughter in their midst
my future son-in-law
my younger son came with
as a chaperone, no less
He could out-party all the rest
And so the time dragged by
I squeezed a world-design stress ball
and watched the sky
At last we boarded, and you should see
the face I must have made as we passed by
the giant planes and ended up in a
two-engine miniature
Austrian Airlines, you see,
is run by Delta too…
I settled into a window seat over the wing,
heavy with foreboding
we need at least three engines for the
November turbulence over the
North-Atlantic
Just then the cabin was filled with
another company of youngsters,
A band of cheerleaders from various schools
in uniform
pom-poms slammed into overheads
squealing and yelling far above
the more measured choir tones.
We took off into the night sky
That looks like Long Island, I sigh
Just about over Center Moriches
the plane began to shudder and pitch
We’re in for quite a ride…
For four hours we lunged around the sky
Dames und Herren, you are about to die
I kept hearing in my head
The wings flapped like a bird
I didn’t know they could do that
And with every thunderous settling as we
staggered across the sky
the cheerleaders shrieked and yelled
with voices pitched so high
they could have strangled themselves…
But with each garbled announcement
we climbed a thousand feet
Not one of us stopped to wonder
when we would ever eat
But finally we rose above the fractured waves of air
and saw the lights of parallel flights
we might make it there
after all
The stewards brought mystery meat
which I could not digest the thought of
much less the actuality
I did not have the courage to get up and stretch
so sat numbly the rest of the nine hour ride
We gave a great cheer as we landed in a foggy soup
And as we waited to depart
a Mozart piece tugged at my heart
playing softly through the intercom
A Salzburg piece, a divertimento
pure and sweet
and all at once I knew
this just might be the start of our
historic dream come true.
If only I could find a place to pee!
My daughter guarded the men’s room for me,
We’d seen it first, I could not wait
such was our fate
I heard that piece in my head again today
And wept for all the heartache that has come our way
since then
and also wondered if anyone had really cried
for what happened to Wolfgang Mozart
when he died.
It may be that a Minnegeddon is here
and that we have by now all learned to fear
an unknown judgment from
the evil of those days
A nation he never knew must justify
the way it treated him
And only God can tell
if we are headed into Heaven or to Hell…
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Pamina, the other Mozart...protected by his great Zauberflote... 