Phil Carradice

St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan

 

Literary Biography - The lockdown has certainly had the effect of stimulating my long-dormant poetic imagination. Over the past five or six years I have written a dozen or more prose volumes, just two or three poems. Small mercies.

Date completed - 26th August 2020

Ballerina Birds

(apologies to Edward Thomas)

 

Yes, I remember Swansea Airport,

the place, the name. Because

one August norning, a day

of pressing heat and opaque light

the Dublin flight dropped unexpectedly

to settle on the tarmac.

 

No-one left and no-one came;

the runway shimmered vacantly.

Then all the birds of Gower

and Carmarthenshire

suddenly took wing, a loud

compelling game over the airfield.

Wave after wave, sweeping low

between besieging trees

or soaring, stalling on the thermals

above our trembling fuselage.

 

Almost an hour we waited,

listening and watching,

doors opened wide, heat baking us

like unleashed radiation.

Still no-one came.

They closed the doors

and we took off again.

 

Yes, I remember Swansea Airport,

the place, the name - and all

those shrieking ballerina birds.