Notes on a Plane Crash

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[the man in the window seat]

We saw the sun come up beneath our wings
and heard the mourning stars, the fading lights
that trickle gently into dark.
Our head against the window-pane
we saw those sighing lights sink down,
extinguish all their fury and their fight,
for what? "They burn their lives away at night,"
he said, "they set themselves on fire for love
and dwindle, grey and widow-old
and trickle gently into dark."

We see the sea stretch out beneath our feet
and tread its carefree paths, the running waves
that stream from portside into night.
Our trembling wingtips dipping low
we feel the water's grave, it calls
like lonely sirens by their wave-washed hearths.
"Their only husbands are the dead," he says,
"they sing their salt-songs choked with guilt
and dwindling, grey and widow-old
they stream with sadness into night."

We will be rushing winds, be streaming skies
who tumble down to meet the arms of land,
the all-embracing arms of God.
The man in seat 11b,
his aching fingers holding tight with hope
will be at peace, to smell the ocean air,
to dance beneath the waves to no-one's tune.
His seatbelt chain will slip from 'round his waist,
and in face they'll say they saw
a transformation of such grace:
a freedom born of loneliness,
the knowledge of new birth.