Passages by Sarah Maguire
Decree: clear skies
over the heart
of London: cirrus
nothing less
flaming
the far edge of blueness,
nothing less
marking
the absolute boundaries
of air, of resolution.
A cast of slowing jumbos,
emptied of fuel, begins
the descent:
trawling
the long southern flight path
down into Heathrow.
When the huge wheels
Hatch
from that cold,
aluminium belly,
will a petrified figure
plummet down
(this time)
into a carpark,
breath frozen midair,
the wrapt human form
seared
on the landing gear
tossed three miles clear
from touchdown,
from migration?
The big silvered craft
run the gamut of light,
taking in evening
buoyant, journeyed:
pushed to the edge
of the city: now exposed,
with its parcel of lights,
its human freight
inching homewards
through dusk, mid-September
as fear
slips its cold roots
through the known.
The dull muddied Thames
is full of the equinox,
dragged by the moon
the dun waters
flush to the Barrier:
a ruined city checked,
a whole rumoured ocean
balanced in abeyance.
Tides dissolve in memory:
history
loosens its cargoes
into the tides
promiscuously mingling,
forgetting,
heading out to open.
But the slit sifts on,
turning and sorting:
as the docklands fall
out of sight,
cargoless,
trafficless, winches abandoned
ceilings stove in
to the skies.
And the skies are rivers
freighting
the burdens
of rivers: transhumance
precious and raw
now landing on tarmac.
The jets tick
as they cool,
boxes contracting
on earth,
as rivets ease back:
the hulk
emptied of passengers
now filling
with migrants
labouring in the site
of exile and arrival.
The swallows
left weeks ago,
with no notice:
one afternoon
the skies
were abandoned:
lack
takes them southwards.
And in the formal garden,
the last hybrid roses
flare rose-pink and
salmon and mauve,
but the sap's on the turn.
And the earth is balanced,
day equalling night:
and is equally
unbalanced
as rumours are pieced
into news.
After this:winter.
The youngest vixen repeats
her sharp scent,
doubles back, excited
back again,
crouching,
back now to the rough path:
slips
under paling fence
and is
gone:
· First published in Irish Pages