Notes on a Long-Haul Flight

The air hostesses
all wear lipstick-coloured hats
with a sash of white silk
draped from ear to shoulder,
like the curtain in a temple.

We float over Germany
and Münster glints below;
a sunken wreck, laden with lost treasure -
white lights like strings of watery pearls
with flecks of Atlantis-blue and gold.

Bucharest is a spider's web
heavy with dew. It mirrors the sky;
a black expanse littered with glass,
the blight mark of a fallen chandelier.
A cracked wind-shield.

Landing in Dubai, the Midas touch
of the sun, rising in the east of the East,
turns all the windows to gold.
Is that the sea or the sky?
Clouds crimp and curl like surf.

Our scissor-flight has cut through
all the ribbons wrapped around the Earth;
Cancer and Capricorn, the bloodline
of the Equator. We are in a tin can being
kicked across the wasteland.

And now, arriving in Melbourne, we have
sunk through the blue waters
like a stone and slowly
settled at the bottom
of the world.