Sunday, January 28, 2007

Aeropelican - Anthony Lawrence's poem

On 15 January I outlined the history of the New England airline Aeropelican originally established to fly between Sydney and Belmont, Newcastle. I mentioned that I had flown this route, one of the most beautiful in Australia.

I see that the New England born poet Anthony Lawrence has written a poem, Aeropelican, that describes this flight. The plane takes off:

All seats on this fourteen-seater have windows,
the portside view a brief slideshow
of Sydney's northern beaches and beyond --
Broken Bay with its sea-going lion's headscrubbed green with altitude,
then to an entrance of lakes,
where silt makes a dye-fed film of arteries threatening closure

The plane comes in to land:

The rest of the flight is unfocussed
as a Newcastle skyline when Newcastle smoked.
The landing, like takeoff, is all loom and fade.
Coming in over Belmont, three boys stand by their rods
to wave from the end of a breaking wall.

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