Airplane poem number three hundred billion and four

(Unrevised. I need a good title. I have so gosh darn many airplane poems.)

I remembered to look out the window this time
as my little plane took off. We headed
up & west & casually strayed over the ocean.
What a boundary!
Off, really off, the edge of the land, the edge
of the continent. In the early video games,
this is that part of the digital landscape
on an infinite loop,
the edge of the game,
the beginning of the endless.
You go as far as you want in that direction;
there’s no new quest to accept,
just mind-numbing eternity,
repeating patterns of white on blue
until you give up out of boredom and return
to the crude and dangerous turmoil of shore.

After our careless jaunt
over the water, we drift back over the land,
onto the straight-line course
south to San Francisco.
What is an ocean, to a pilot?
Nothing but a new color underneath,
not a boundary or an inconvenience.
Here we are,
free of solid ground,
and the massive waves
etching quiet pale lines in the cerulean below
will not toss us high in their momentum-governed arms
or rock us violently to a watery sleep.

We cross and recross the beach
until the clouds politely clear away
all vestiges of Earth.

~Alissa