Taxi <br />Slowly <br />Turn <br />Pass <br />Repass <br />Ugly <br />Concrete <br />Patient <br />Radar <br />Scanners, <br />Edging the grey <br />Tarmac. <br /> <br />Getting lined up. <br />Pause. <br />Draw breath <br />Seemingly, consider. <br /> <br />Seemingly, decide, let out the breath <br />And roaring start the headlong flight <br />At a run, determined <br />That the miracle will happen, <br />That all the tons of metal, flesh, plastic, fibre, <br />All will rise, against nature? - no, all will rise <br />Obedient to the laws of physics <br />Engineers ingeniously devised….. <br /> <br />We're up! <br />The world tilts <br />And now <br />We are the still <br />Centre of the universe. <br />The wheeling world <br />Embroidered <br />With cunning seams, <br />Appliqué fields, <br />Geometric designs of towns, <br />Picked out with beads of houses, <br />Scattered with sequins <br />Of car windscreens <br />Flashing in the sunset. <br /> <br />The moon swings by, <br />Its softened underbelly <br />Shadowed. <br />Valleys and dry channels <br />Unfocused. <br />But drawn on luminescent blue <br />Its upper arc is perfect - <br />A disc, for sure - no sphere like common earth <br />(Though scientists insist, <br />And who am I to argue, <br />For some of them have walked on it.) <br /> <br />And now, a white line along a glassy rim. <br />The silent sea paints the edge of England <br />Translucent green. <br />Fertile seaweed underneath <br />Clear below the waterline. <br />Above our static view, <br />The spectrum colours of the cloudless sunset <br />Shade softly. <br /> <br />The world wheels on. <br />And we have taken off.<br /><br />Janice Windle<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/landscapes-collection-taking-off/
