Sitting by a window at Terminal 4,
I can feel the fuel at my feet
flow up through the legs of the seat
as it fills Delta’s snub-nosed belly.
Everywhere, everything rolls with this;
everything replacing something
like tides of internal pumping
in an external clockwork orange –
yes, I was reading but now I am writing;
of the strrrr-dump strrr-dump of wheels
riding tiled floors on prams and trollies
and undropped baggage to be crammed
as crammed as us into sections of gut;
we are molecules – we depart and die
in Heathrow’s exhaled sighs,
churning screams of turbine lungs.
-------------------------------------------------
Then of the majestic grounded, stately
berthing with wheeling gates;
through the glass its size awaits,
an uncanny monster at rest.
Others roaming, roaring, rearing their heads
soon soaring into the distant clouds,
even as new alphas are inhaled,
to rumble and strip clean their bowels.
