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Take-off

by Arun Sagar

That rev and release: the angled moments when
you’re buckled down and arrowed upwards, aimed,
the ground contracting like a fired bow.
The rows of trees give way to toy-brick towers;
your city maps itself. You’re in-between,
no more of earth but not yet of the sky;
your distances now flickering to mist,
flurries of strangeness whitening around you,
the sun a nuclear glow. And you may sense
the weight of a cold eye, an archer’s gaze
as he shades his face to squint up at the clouds,
tracing your path, judging how far you’ll go
before you fall.
                            The cabin tilts again.
You peer down at the ocean’s oval frame.

[ Previously published in The Journal ]

Arun Sagar currently lives in France, where he is a doctoral student at Rouen University. Some of his poems have appeared in journals including The Literateur, Press 1, nthposition and Free Verse.

Pat Jones
Published 30 May 2011