two years in now

and a low-flying plane

has become a singular event

a topic of conversation

 

or an airliner

so high up

it tinkles like a star

trailing the slow thunder of the gods

 

we wonder where it’s headed

like children at the Quay

cupping their tiny ears

to the sepia blast of the foghorns

 

what journey could be so compelling

in a time of plague?

it’s as though these wonders of science

that had already plumetted

 

from the stratosphere of 60‘s glamour

to the squalor of 80‘s utility

these miracles of displacement

that gave the plague its wings

 

had seen their herd cropped by it

laying low laying low

in the desert somewhere

the dry wind whistling in their bones