Baggage

Sharp tang of jet fuel
In the quick-clouding autumn air.

Redolent of adventure
And unconsidered action:

Black leafless birches and moonlit snow
Above sixty-six degrees;

Creaking saddles and boyhood dreams
Beneath the western pines;

The earth’s bones breaking through rusty dirt
On the dreaming plain.

Fragments of lost lives, long-departed versions of myself
Like the last suitcases on the carousel

Slowly circling, slowly circling
Never to be reclaimed.

 
 

At Gatwick Airport railway station, November 2019