Elegy for a Fallen Craft

(On witnessing a hovering helicopter which later crashed, killing five)

The village clock tolls the knell of past middays,
Offsetting the chopping beat of blades o'er the fields.
I reach my car; look up to where the chopper stays.
Not fields, this cadence,
But space which to those blades yields.

Now shines the empty landscape at this site,
Where all such space a missing helicopter holds.
As it once turned briefly to the south,
from its immoderate height
Above the ridged-and-furrowed
Meadows' medieval folds.

I keep my gaze up for brief seconds,
Then put key into lock;
Sense my own uncertainty, and the pilot's, too.
Landbound and airborne, both in indecision;
taking stock.
Not knowing when
An answer might possibly break through.

The car's engine blocks the chopping, in totality,
And I keep my eye on the road, not the sky.
This is my truth, the ultimate reality:
Detached from what must be
The doomed craft, flying by.

Later the news is broadcast;
Of a search in the Irish Sea.
A Twin Squirrel, red, left from Luton, five aboard.
The vision comes back; the seconds,
They envelop me,
And the details return, from having been
In memory stored.

Luton? The flight path didn't make sense. Not direct.
Nor the hovering over the field. The half-turn.
The pause.
Theories crash in my head, and don't intersect;
A trip off course... a second thought?....
An engine with flaws?

But then the story leaves me, and passes into reasons.
The flight path to Dublin over Bletchley,
And a nan's home.
We each have shocks and surprises,
All in their seasons,
And sometimes start a journey
Not even knowing whence we roam.


So it must be, that the chopper flies away to its fate,
Its space above Newton Longville
Abandoned to the past.
With those of us left on the ground, looking up...
Too late...
Left wondering if any precious seconds
Are going to last.

trawsfynydd, wales
air accident investigation branch 01252 512299
incident report 17007285
d.c. chris

What the Albatross Saw

I ran to the sea, my mother.
I ran to the sea alone,
And there by the edge of diminishing waves,
I picked up a skipping stone.

Then the stone became me, my mother.
The stone became me alone.
And the thrower looked west,
When he threw to the east,
As his hand lost its flesh to the bone.

I come from the sea, my mother,
Where the ghosts of lost mariners moan
That the deeper we go, then the deeper we get,
After skipping and sinking. Alone.