FROM ABOVE

As the G-force takes hold, lurches and lifts us from the land,
I know a critical point has passed and let go your hand.
You start to read but, as ever, I crane at the window,
Awed to see so much in so small a space so far below:
The miniature world before it dissolves into cloud-haze -
The churches, towns and hills and the woodland and waterways,
And I am humbled with wonder at such infrastructure
Wrought on the sprawl of land, the order of agriculture,
The charting of seas and skies, the power of invention,
Which, from above, seems entwined with nature’s evolution.

A crimson band of sunset girdles the horizon’s glow
Between high, blue heaven above and deep, black cloud below.
The feeling is of floating in limbo between it all,
As evening sifts into nightfall and then into landfall,
And our aeroplane descends through tonight’s rare clarity.
Coastlines twinkle now and the bejewelled urban circuitry
Defines itself in the eye, whilst the vacuum in our ears
Quickens the pulse and the mind is clenched by echoing fears
When the wheels hit the runway to rush, then slow to a stand,
And we kiss and smile at the intense, white grip of each hand.


(2010)


A few flights in the making, this one. Unusually, I’d developed a number of single words - rather than phrases – which eventually suggested the beginnings of a rhyme-scheme. The long lines distance the resulting couplets and hopefully make the structure of the poem an effective one.

Completed after a wonderfully clear return-flight from Dubrovnik. We’re not sufficiently ‘frequent fliers’ to be blasé about the experience, hence the ritual of holding hands.