Departure Lounge

angle-plotting arcing sunrays; always a melancholic moment

A time-honoured spectacle,
high above, edged in cold orange,
a speckled backcloth of billowing silk
sweeps again across the sky;
birds, in ever swelling numbers
are anxiously gathering.
 
Like a thousand marauding hawks
locked on one diving, darting prey,
desperate to delegate responsibility
to another, starlings soar and swoop
in choreographed formations.

Winged insects left on earlier flights,
chased by swallows crest hopping
to greener seas,
gorging on the fertile walls
of premonitory storms.

Afternoon air chills and tensions,
last calls repeated, all haste,
to the exit gate, where
magnetic nubs in countless beaks
finally guide them southwards;

and, in the still, dark aftermath,
as city lights brighten, saddened,
abandoned, we remember the dead,
the swiftness of their passing,
when we had so much more
to say.
 
 
 
Goth:2020