Frequent Flyer

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
my very ancient-most ancestor
a tree rat all insectivorous sinew
answers my roar with its own
a long high note straight out
of Cassiopeia

***

Notes

No, that’s not a spelling mistake. The Brits are right, aluminium is prettier to say.

I feel as if way more than half my poems could, like this one, be titled after Blake — “A Memorable Fancy”.