Frequent Flyer
I was flying in an aircraft of bones not the pilot not the ball-turret gunner I was flying in an aircraft as if in my own bones my aluminium hide
the captain’s intercom voice goes all through me and the flight attendant’s safety instructions her boredom buzzes against my rivets like a trapped wasp
but I rise hungry to exceed myself I dip a wing and turn out from the lit grids of suburbs with their unlikely multitude of shadows which must be trees
and down there somewhere my very ancient-most ancestor a tree rat all insectivorous sinew answers my roar with its own a long high note straight out of Cassiopeia
No, that’s not a spelling mistake. The Brits are right, aluminium is prettier to say. I feel as if way more than half my poems could, like this one, be titled after Blake — “A Memorable Fancy”.