You live underneath a major flight path.
You have never seen the Pacific.

From your neighbourhood near Schipol
you can see the landing gear deploy.

The aircraft engines sing like humpback
whales. You have never seen the need

for travel papers. Elsewhere, the hurricane’s eye
expands. In Irta’ale the earth cracks open

its thousand mouths. On New Year’s Eve
in Beebe five thousand redwinged blackbirds

fall from the sky. The televisions say:
only small islands grow nervous,

at every slight rise in the surf.
This season feels like regret on the skin.

Everywhere, border forces merge with the police.
At the garden’s edge giant hogweed

encroach the silvery stems of globe thistle.
We spend more time outside.

On longer days we walk on the dikes.
A sprinkler wets newly sown tomato seeds.

 

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From Magma 87, Islands

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