Cloud Trick
I am writing on a plane:
An airbus A380 cruising
Through the emptied rooms of heaven -
The place seems larger,
Now there's no one living here.
The clouds below are thick
And suddenly I wonder:
Why is it, every time I fly,
I cannot see the land below?
Yet when I look up from the ground
I often see the aeroplanes,
Travelling through an open sky,
Angels encased in corporate livery.
Now, in my seat by the window,
Staring down,
I see little specks of light -
Perturbations in my visual senses -
Errors of the mind -
Highlighted on the canvas of the air -
And on these flickers of illusion I fixate.
What if there is no land below?
Could it be that every flight we take,
Is a computer-generated fantasy?
An elaborate scheme dreamt up
By secret powers,
Who wish us to believe in forces
Beyond all reach of human mastery?
Maybe they catapult us
To this virtual place -
A hologram of God's old house,
Designed to bring the memory near:
The hope that humanity might have
A parent in the atmosphere.
Then,
Upon taking us up
To the promised land
They showcase the sacred vacancy
Of all our dreams of paradise.
Just as I begin to fall
Into the particulars
Of this miraculous conspiracy
I stop, and realise how poor I am -
I always buy the cheapest flight:
Always leaving early in the morning,
Just at the end of the night...
Do clouds form like dew
In the darkness?
As the Earth spins,
Are its hemispheres
Alternately cloaked in veils of white,
Like an eye that opens and closes
In both directions?
What I would give to witness that.