We live beneath an aircraft flight path

Planes fly over, east to west,

From somewhere over there

To some elsewhere

Manchester, maybe, or Leeds

Perhaps further,

Newcastle or Glasgow

Or some other country altogether.

I have seen them cut the clouds

Like sleek white knives

Detaching drifts of puff

Pulling them apart

A swirling disturbance

Curling in their wake

As a punt passing over a lake

Leaves eddies where it was.

Looking up today

At blinding bright blue heaven

I saw a hurry of swifts chasing tails

Higher and higher

In the eye wide sky

Under crisscross con trails

That themselves soon became

Long lonely clouds.

The flight paths above us

Like all paths everywhere

Start and end

Lead to somewhere

From elsewhere

For no reason

But the journey itself

And we follow our own paths

For the same purpose.