AEROPELICAN -- SYDNEY/NEWCASTLE

The flight begins
with the starboard propeller's slow revolutions
that become, because of the wide yellow bands
on the paddle-shaped ends, a Catherine wheel's
one contained spark in the spin of the blade
and the blade's dark companions:
warnings, thrown air, and stories that include
half the face and one arm of a drink-addled swinger.

The Aeropelican gets down to it, and is serious,
sending vibrations from cabin to body,
especially the pelvic cradle - that small set of jaws
from grey nurse or whaler without hinge or teeth
being lifted and fed as you break from earth
to climb and turn north.

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 head
scrubbed green with altitude, then to an entrance of lakes,
where silt makes a dye-fed film of arteries threatening closure.

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.
Touching down, a woman asks
Anyone else get a nosebleed in those clouds?

© Anthony Lawrence