Every Landing is an Emergency

The arrival.

The trudge,
the stones and the mud,
the mute bushland,
the low horizon.

the vernacular, the tire tracks,
the grins, the Stuvy butts, the rumour of mountains,

the runway, the flattened grass,
the towplane, the V8 Holden engine, the rope,
the gradient blue,

the wings,
the parachute, the wind.

the bumps, the anxiety,
the roar, the browns and greys and fawns spooling past

then

the takeoff, the feeling,
the reorganisation of the senses,
the farms, the grids,
the lakes and dams veined with light,
the sun twinned in the water,
the curvature of the earth,

the release, the rope, the clunk,
the towplane scudding away,
the calm, the light, the light.

the pillars of hot air,
the clouds shredding into breeze,
the rising, the rising,
the conversation of wind,
the taloned birds,
the whistle.

the town, the railway line stitching its way to Melbourne,
the whispers of tribes and bushrangers, ancestors and
combustible summers.

the freedom, the air, the forgetting,
the escape, the air,
The air. The dip. The swoop.

The landing.