Aeroplane
why are your in-flight magazines all glossy
written
for persons who imagine they reside inside seaside villas?
Your
longroom is a cramped cinema, human abacus, a squat where
everything’s to hand,
pretend confessional, makeshift kindergarten.
Your
symmetrical windows lose track of East and West,
time
of day becomes conjectural, almost like being in hospital.
Aeroplane
your view stretches past wingtips to cold burn horizon:
clouds,
that beneath the wheels promise illusions of soft lands.
It
is reported that you can fly into rockfaces, pylons, or similar,
or
disappear entirely from view, less than a speck in the sea.
Which
is perhaps why you speak so lightly breezily easy
the
captain and cabin crew delighted to have everyone on board.
Reassuring
knowing infectious cheer will touch down before long
together with everyone
else, huddled in square formation.
Having,
thanks to you, experienced extensive frequent flight
perhaps
passengers no longer wonder about being birds.
Joining
the avians, behaving becoming them, is achieved:
one
more dream to tick off on humanity’s to-do list.
Pineapple
juice sharply acid in silver box foretells a destination
or
chalky biscuits busting from zip-bag, tea in a one-use.
The
national dish reduced to a cultic culinary cube
arrives
with irons, via a waitperson attentive as a kangaroo.
Aeroplane,
to watch your shadow dart across fields and forest
inexorably
over rivers and glint, is to catch a minute’s content.
Your
re-run romcom concludes in unconditional bliss (again)
a
thousand miles left for you to move, your viewers not an inch.
As
the lovers, a tubular belle and headphone beau, at last
hit
the ground running, there to halt happily ever after.
Luggage,
meanwhile, moves around abstractedly like the clouds
outside
your symmetry, all with a mind of their own.
Tin
feathers know the score through storm and super tailwind:
ranks
of rivets hold you fast, a riveting ride.
For
now you are quiet beers, muted orchestras on tap
lullaby
corners, an aerial dormitory closer to stars coming out.
