Gate C 22

At gate C 22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like satin ribbons tying up a gift. And kissing.
Like she’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching—
the passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the guy
selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could
taste the kisses, crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
like your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after—if she beat you, or left you, or
you’re lonely now—you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off and someone gazing at you
like you were the first sunrise seen from the earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
each of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, little gold
hoop earrings, glasses--all of us, tilting our heads up.

*Ellen Bass' most recent book, Mules of Love, was published by BOA Editions in 2002 and won the Lambda Literary Award. She also received the Pablo Neruda Prize, Larry Levis Prize, New Letters Award, and others. She teaches poetry and creative writing in Santa Cruz, CA. To read more of her work, visit her web site at www.ellenbass.com.