Janice Windle - (Landscapes Collection) .... Taking Off

Taxi
Slowly
Turn
Pass
Repass
Ugly
Concrete
Patient
Radar
Scanners,
Edging the grey
Tarmac.

Getting lined up.
Pause.
Draw breath
Seemingly, consider.

Seemingly, decide, let out the breath
And roaring start the headlong flight
At a run, determined
That the miracle will happen,
That all the tons of metal, flesh, plastic, fibre,
All will rise, against nature? - no, all will rise
Obedient to the laws of physics
Engineers ingeniously devised…..

We're up!
The world tilts
And now
We are the still
Centre of the universe.
The wheeling world
Embroidered
With cunning seams,
Appliqué fields,
Geometric designs of towns,
Picked out with beads of houses,
Scattered with sequins
Of car windscreens
Flashing in the sunset.

The moon swings by,
Its softened underbelly
Shadowed.
Valleys and dry channels
Unfocused.
But drawn on luminescent blue
Its upper arc is perfect -
A disc, for sure - no sphere like common earth
(Though scientists insist,
And who am I to argue,
For some of them have walked on it.)

And now, a white line along a glassy rim.
The silent sea paints the edge of England
Translucent green.
Fertile seaweed underneath
Clear below the waterline.
Above our static view,
The spectrum colours of the cloudless sunset
Shade softly.

The world wheels on.
And we have taken off.

Janice Windle

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