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Poetry
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View from a plane
By Snodlander
09 February 2007
I usually have an aisle seat.  Wednesday morning I flew to Manchester in the window seat.  Low sun and a hard frost made the Pennines seem like an alien landscape.  Beautiful and strange.

The Pennines
Curving whale-back below
The frost making everything sea-grey.

A moon crater.
A grid of buildings
Or maybe caravans
Chequers the floor of it,
Tiny rectangles from this height

A perfect circle of trees
Surrounding an unnatural dome of a hill.
A tonsure around the monstrous head of an ogre.
A footpath creases the pate
Like a scar from battle.
Was he stunned by a blow
And the ground swallowed him as he stood comatose?

A wall
Maybe a mile long
Straight as a sunbeam
Separating a piece of moorland from its identical neighbour.
Why?

A flat hilltop
Covered in tiny gullies and folds
Thrown into relief by the early sun.
The surface of a brain
Scaled huge for children
To run through its mind.

The head of a valley.
The dark shadow making it bottomless
Unfathomable.
The edge of the surrounding plateaus shattered and cracked
As though the devil’s hoof had stamped
Fracturing the fragile land around.

Odd straight broad lines
Shaved into the hills
Like tiny landing strips.
Or Mum’s attempts at a crewcut gone wrong.

And then the houses of Manchester.
We drop.
The landing gear lowers and locks outside my window.
Grass then tarmac.
The wheel comes to within a couple of feet of the ground.
And seems to stay there
Holding pursed lips
Over the mouth of his lover.
Teasing,
Promising,
Then in a moment of heat descending to make fierce contact.


Reviews

Written by Marybarry (237 comments posted) 9th February 2007
A lovely poem. 
I especially liked "The Pennines curving whale back" 
I love poetry and I will keep trying but when I see what you and Talisker write............ 
Thank you for reading my stuff and for your help. patricia 8) 8)

Written by Talisker (1309 comments posted) 9th February 2007
Very nice Snodders, you have an unfair surfeit of talent, intelligence and wit. You turn your insanely creative hands to poetry at the click of an optical mouse, and hey, what lovely, descriptive verse. Not up to my standards, of course, but very, very nice. My personal favourite was; 
 
"A tonsure around the monstrous head of an ogre" - another baldy reference. Fab. 
 
Oli :)

Written by Snodlander (501 comments posted) 9th February 2007
You're both too kind. Really. I feel fraudulent posting 'serious' poems. I really do not know anything about poetry, but looking out the window I saw things that couldn't be described in prose. 
 
And the hirsute have far too much their own way.

Written by francoise (129 comments posted) 9th February 2007
Liked some of the images of giant creatures, I can completely relate to how an aisle seat view can let your creative juices run wild! A few things I wasn't sure about: the punctuation in places seemed alittle awkward as well as the short and long line breaks, I also felt the seventh stanza, though endearing and funny, broke the running mystical theme of the piece itself. 
Otherwise a nice piece dotted with some lovely images 
My favourite were the opening lines.  
 
Fran

Written by ellipinnock (1753 comments posted) 9th February 2007
Blimey you don't hold back on the old imagery do you?! Liked some of the images very much, particularly the beginning. 
 
However, so many different metaphors in this that it felt rather jumbled to me like a list of images which in a sense gives you the feeling of travelling but it needed to be more cohesive and a bit less prosy imo. 
 
However, not bad overall, enjoyed it and it's nice to see you over in this neck of the woods on occasion. 
 
Elli 

Written by Witzl (1585 comments posted) 9th February 2007
I liked the tonsured ogre too, but also 'Mum's attempts at a crewcut gone wrong.' Oh, the awful haircuts I've given people . . . Still, I never charged for them.  
 
If you put this poem away for a few months then come back to it, you may find things about it that you want to change -- or rearrange. But I think it is remarkably good -- and that you ought to push for more window seats.  
 

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