Flying Away
I sit watching the green line on the screen,
your flight moving relentlessly onwards,
away from me. Everything feels hollow.
So many people here didn’t want you to go.
What have we done to the world,
how did we shrink it to allow us to travel
so easily, leaving heartache behind us?
Of course, when you come out of torpor,
the time warp of travel and transport,
others will be there waiting for you,
so happy to see you. You will be back
where your tongue sits more easily,
where your being is once more at home,
away from our home, away from us.
We didn’t plan for it to be this way.
You are like a curve-winged gull that flies
white and elegant, over ploughed fields
and inland towns, seemingly at home,
but out of place, lost to the sea
where it really belongs, that sometimes
must go back to the waves and the shore.
Philip Dunkerley is the Poetry Society Stanza representative at Stamford, Lincolnshire and is active in open-mic and other local poetry groups. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies, and he has also published reviews and translations.