MEXICO CITY

Two hour layover. Buy a NY Times & change money. What's going on Norteamerica? Quick final beer before noon, wash down a plate of chilaquiles while rock 'n roll clatters across the airport. Then on the runway flipping the paper. The stream of imperial economy eddies and swirls, all the pages report it. Jerry Garcia a few days ago dead. What does it matter. Unnamed staff writer declares him shrewd businessman. Not a word for the music. Eddies and swirls. The stream of economy. Our plane taxis and lifts. We go north. North like coffee, like fruit, like oil. Air billows beneath and clings to tall buildings. Edge of the city stretches to distant mountains swallowed in smog. Square cement structures, an oceanlike smog. One day will our whole planet be like this? The stream of economy. Twenty million people directly beneath. Consider their songs. Consider the bards who have died. Massive buildings along the edge of a ghost lake, dried up centuries back. A few songs on parchment or paper, then gone from our world. Consider the bards. Consider the vanished lake, the ghost dynasties, pyramids, warfare, resistance. Consider the bards.