Poem 17

A summer poem – it might have been called Middle Air – about taking refuge in being in transit … someone who imagines they’ll do their thinking on the plane … written a long time ago as stewardess and even cup of orange shows …

( I particularly like the tyre-squeal image and gravity taps us out of our dream … )

Weightless

I escape from remembering
and fly north

                      spilling over lines of coast
like a child's haphazard colouring in
I fly from you a steel arrow
into the baked head of the country
      a cup of orange
on a plastic tray pulled
to breaking point in the middle air

            the trick
        is to stay inside the lines
        to stay here
                             weightless
        in earth's bitter streams
        of sunlight

but the second airport wavers underneath
and we swing down
to the sugary friction
                                      ground squealing
at its burnt shoulder

gravity taps us out of our dream
the stewardess dark against the heat
of the opened door hands back
      to each of us
re-earthed
                   our sorrows