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John Clare
Above the russet clods the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize--
Up from their hurry see the Skylark flies,
And oer her half-formed nest, with happy wings,
Winnows the air till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust spot in the sunny skies,
And drops and drops till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed--not dreaming then
That birds, which flew so high, would drop again
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
fall colors
a yellowjacket’s
unsteady flight
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
If travel were just
the open road, I might
take to it. Not this
labored labyrinth,
this intestinal clench
of visas tickets security screenings long lines wrong seats bad restrooms too much luggage no-fly lists takeoff turbulence recirculated air cramped legroom boredom soreness limbo purgatory sleepless wondering will they let us in turn us back demand proof of our identity confiscate our umbilical cords make us wait wait wait wait,
wherever we are bound.
Aircraft. It sounds like something one could learn: how to breathe, how to oxidize. But this craft is the kind that floats, and it is enormous. It takes us the full width of Norway at its widest point to reach cruising altitude.
The Boeing 787 is nicknamed the Dreamliner, and its crowded cabin, though far from silent, is filled with a lovely hush of white noise that makes it difficult to stay awake. The only light left in the sky is a band of red above an oddly low horizon which goes before us like Yahweh leading the Jews out of Egypt, on and on into what my body assures me should be night.
five-hour sunset
a movie plays on the back
of every seat
Sometimes I think I finally found the one in you.
Sometimes I wonder if you feel it too.
Because when I look at you I don't feel ashamed anymore.
Because when I look at you I see a true friend.
Someone I can trust with heart and soul.
Finally;
Finally my heart feels whole.
You ask me if I am okay when no one else would because no one else notices.
You laugh with me when no one else would because we have jokes in common no one else has.
And I will blush when you look at me.
And I will smile when you look away.
And when you hold me tight,
I can't help but feel like I am on a flight.
Every evening the trees inhale birds
Swirling back home a warm shawl
But I still wait for my perch in your arms
I would peg so lightly the sheets of your night flights
We would travel in one mind your old lands my new skies
And every morning you would breathe me fly
News: a signature of flight
stays imprinted on blue-black strata
in Earth’s uncertain crust.
(The body vanished long ago.)
The British, desperate like
everyone for fuel, mining in
the vicinity of Hell, uncovered
this icon of wing, which dates
from when flight went
unnamed in air. We glance
at accounts concerning
“the fossilized wing of
Earth’s first flying thing.”
Shall we congratulate
this synecdoche of dragonfly
set deep in Derbyshire coal?
The field of our day lay ordinarily
before us. Gravity and practice
tethered our thoughts
to checklists. Helium
swelled fabric beyond wrinkled
rainbow to painted light-bulb. Up—
and foreheads; then hats and coiffures,
quickly pigment on the landscape. Cheers
littered the wind. We thought
we knew the limits. But late
in the day the continent of air between
field and cloud shrank to an urgent isthmus.
The causes were final and cited
accurately. In the meantime,
we bartered in good faith with Earth,
starting with sandbags, moving through provisions,
Man is a bird:
He rises on fine wings
Into the Heaven's clear light;
He flies away and sings--
There's music in his flight.
Man is a bird:
In swiftest speed he burns,
With twist and dive and leap;
A bird whose sudden turns
Can drive the frightened sheep.
Man is a bird:
Over the mountain high,
Whose head is in the skies,
Cut from its shoulder by
A cloud--the bird-man flies.
Man is a bird:
Now folds the Tree of Day its perfect flowers,
And every bloom becomes a bud again,
Shut and sealed up against the golden showers
Of bees that hover in the velvet hours....
Now a strain
Wild and mournful blown from shadow towers,
Echoed from shadow ships upon the foam,
Proclaims the Queen of Night.
From their bowers
The dark Princesses fluttering, wing their flight
To their old Mother, in her huge old home.
White stars scattering,
Pale rain of spray-drops,
Delicate flash of smoke wind-drifted low and high,
Silver upon dark purple,
The gulls quiver
In a noiseless flight, far out across the sky.