Moon flight

After four hours waiting on the tarmac

on a plane home

only for it to then be grounded, 

my hot and heavy limbs

sank into a new aeroplane seat,

my body 

a beanbag without much stuffing

folding down on itself. 

A privileged kind of holiday fatigue,

the kind where I'm scorched and 

languid, 

salt-marked and bronzed from days of

enviable winter sun.

But still, 

nobody wants to spend four hours

on a plane that doesn't even take off.

The new plane was smaller,

hotter,

busier,

but on the ascent we tracked a giant glowing

peppermint in the dark-

a full moon in virgo,

blaring a white runway of light on the

sea which we flew over at alarming speed.

It's funny, flying,

isn't it. 

How it's both real and unreal

at the same time,

like so many other things in life. 

I ordered an unnecessary wine,

and wanted to read my book but

all I could do was 

gaze out there,

at that peppermint moon,

the way you eye someone you know

will become a lover, but

before anything has happened. 

It stayed right by my side for hours;

the whole flight,

longer than I sat on that other 

dead aircraft,

reminding me to think about letting go, 

and my intentions,

and look back at old ones I'd made. 

I'd never have seen this moon 

if we'd set off on time,

I thought, 

wondering what it was about the leylines of fate 

that made me look at its cool and

watchful presence tonight,

over a sea that scared me,

wondering if anyone ever really wants to

go home.