writers island - flight

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in the unlikely event of an emergency...
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Every seat is taken. Two, maybe three hundred people sit shoulder to shoulder in the cramped cabin. Each safely buckled into their tiny space.

The crew impassively perform the emergency procedure ritual, arms flying hither and thither like so many human windmills.

Half way up the plane a group of businessmen sit reading, ignoring, nonchalant. They’ve seen it so many times before. Two nuns listen attentively whilst fiddling frantically with their Rosary beads. A small child struggles and shrieks as it attempts to make a break for freedom.

A couple, clearly in love, are oblivious to the stewardess’s warnings of dire emergencies that might occur, and gaze lovingly into each other’s starry eyes. An elderly man fiddles with his hearing aid whilst shouting to his embarrassed wife that ‘the girl is mumbling’

She points to the exits, her arms shoot forward and then stretch out to her sides. A group of young men, already in the party spirit call out in unison ‘I must, I must improve my bust’

She finishes yet another demonstration sure in the knowledge that her words went largely unheeded. She packs away her kit and takes her seat for yet another takeoff.
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Some continue reading, others scrabble about under their seats to reassure themselves that they do in fact have a safety jacket. The nuns stare straight ahead and the small child gives up its struggle. The old chaps hearing aid whistles loudly and the lads start shouting for drinks. The loving couple have moved not an inch.
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poem12 - takeoff
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Two mighty engines roar
I am pressed against my seat
as the giant silver bird
thunders down the runway

A sudden quiet, calm
as we rise into the sky
leaving my stomach
on the ground below

We steeply bank, and the plane
stands on its wingtip.
I stare down at a monopoly
of tiny streets below

Then level flight
higher and higher
Wisps of clouds
rush by my window

And then an eerie silence
as fifty shafts
of brilliant sunlight
illuminate the cabin

Now we float
above a sea
of undulating
purest white

Then I have a gin and tonic!
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