Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anna Bowles
Airplane Mode
Nothing bad can happen on a plane.
Engine fires, earache, hijackers; but no new grief.
The heart is contained.
Cupped in the silence,
sorrow makes truce
with the green lands below.
In the regulate hum of the aircon,
the news cycle slows
to the unwrapping of dubious sandwiches,
Netflix lite and unquiet dreams.
Two hundred strangers cooped in this tube,
Each is the centre, and the compass spins
till we fold our wings under the empty sun
and tilt to the landing point.
Brace for connection. Under my fingers
the oracle rouses and seethes.
Anna Bowles started to write poetry following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and her work has been published in Magma, Orbis, The Four-Faced Liar and Poetry Salzburg. She blogs about her travels and activism at annabowles.substack.com
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