At Christmas
All Easyjet flights
are cancelled – only
difficult journeys now.
Three in party hats
come dragging their presents
over a snowy car park.
A few attendants shepherd
them into a building:
the call to desert places.
Looking up for a moving
light or at Sky
News. Stasis over
the business empires.
A child has made an angel
by the automatic barrier
and a mother feeds her baby.
This breathtaking, breath-
making fall.
John Greening is a Cholmondeley, Bridport & TLS Prize winner, he’s published over fifteen collections, including in 2019 The Silence (Carcanet) and Europa’s Flight (New Walk). He is currently editing Iain Crichton Smith www.johngreening.co.uk
Down times