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Chris Hunt



AIRPORT
 

Our ends meet at the airport. 
Asthma sufferers, agoraphobics, 
a hopeless entry of abandoned hosts 
through automatic portals and unmanned doors. 
What meets ends, except in the essence 
behind tearful faces, hard fought or hard felt, 
a carrier baggage of casualty’s falls 
weighed down with gain, much else undeclared. 
The airport is ancient; its runways and ramps 
range on out of radar, its taxis and shuttles 
a scoping of Brownian motion, atomic 
reaction to holdalls whose handling crews hurry 
to mirror the chaotic pathways of progress 
that cargo-class tickets compel. 
                                                   I don’t think 
taking care can do harm, on the flat moving walkways 
that goad us the way that they want us to go. 
I don’t see the electrical network 
that powers the signs; I don’t know
how the circling above summons magnetic forces below. 

A momentary motion taxis the lanes 
between blanched concrete, and neatly disjoints 
planes of action, trips an infra-red beam 
and the fox diverts Foxtrot Four-Niner from 
ground control’s predestined path. A passenger 
disembarks late in another dimension, 
misses a pre-booked connection, loses 
a critical contract and now needs a new occupation. 
The fox merely followed free will. 

At night only, of course. The naked eye 
spies a return match, misses 
most of the tendrils meandering no more 
at random than DNA’s ripple, 
fine silk that flails but ties hard and fast 
as if bindweed. The bandwagon pitches – 
did I see you there? 
                                 That I doubt, 
that you do too, that lights our lost hope. 

But I know you, touch you in places 
too secret for words, a sixth sense 
and seventh swarms to our shoulders – 
you know what I mean. When at night 
the bright dance droops, the air between eyes 
crackles with tangible flow, and the two 
would-be lovers will be so, but who said 
and who knew and who felt the first shocking spark? 

The cast will collect. I see them converge 
in departures, arrivals and packed baggage claim – 
we’re all represented. Our threads interweave, 
vibrations at harmonic frequencies higher 
than sound play in stasis; a pattern in place. 

I’ve been here before. I’ve beaten my way 
through my own mental smartcarts that mimic control 
and I’m lost. On what level I’m left, what exit 
to freeway, what fleeting place this 
where I sit and expire. What escape from the siren 
who led me with laughter and swift febrile steps 
wait a while, don’t I recognize... 

And now it flips. Sunspots on eyes and new planets. 
The naked heavens afire, no spun veil 
to contain comprehension, no network 
of signs keeps the language base closed. 

Retching on lost atmosphere, but that fear 
is just in the mind, and I hack back 
to see the big spaces. Here between worlds. 
Wail to the cosmos, parched and alone 
and alive, hailing the scape and extended, 
expectant of silence as wide as the void – 
when a voice comes, of ages, of DNA’s 
sine wave, that coldly connects in the mind 
and then goes. 
                         Till I’m lost - 
dead in the synapse, dead simultaneous 
ache inside bones, in unbuttressed traces 
in lymph node and liver, and livid in trains 
outside thought. Yet I’m here and you’re not, 
boasting duty free purchase but no boarding pass. 
I’m here on this level, but still the wave trills 
in the veins, a capillary tinnitus 
roars in the rain. 

You don’t want this. 
Out in the surge, you seize all your moments 
as I may not mine. Your maelstrom of 
watery drops willed together to rush 
into waves, your currents are tidal 
and ebb in due stage, till your face
betrays creases of softened-up skin, and big beads 
down your cheeks from without or within. 
Undercurrents can catch you. The picture 
will pixellate up on the screen, the splash 
as a whole says no more than it means. 

Me, I don’t watch. For that matter, that 
matters, that inchoate mass will not buoy up 
my weight. When I whisper through 
routes that aren’t verbal you simply aren’t with me, 
it’s not that you’re late. 

Black and white is all grey. Stands to reason, 
we’re none of us perfect but still the degrees 
are the doors to the gates to the path to the plane. 
Wishes heavier than air heave to flight, 
the less effort the cleaner exhaustion. 
I’m out there, and here, and what I am 
also, and rows of constructions 
are most of it all. 
                           The air hums 
with the take-off. I won’t see you again.


Copyright Chris Hunt 2013

poet Chris Hunt
Chris Hunt read English at Jesus College Cambridge, where he came under the influence of JH Prynne, running the Blue Room and Suspension poetry groups and co-editing Blueprint poetry magazine. In the 70s and 80s his work appeared in numerous magazines and three volumes of his poems were published by small presses. In 1979 he joined BBC Television, moving in 1984 to produce and direct The South Bank Show and in 1988 founding his own
production company, which he ran until 2012. Programmes and films he produced or directed won over 50 awards, including four Emmys and two Baftas. He has recently returned to writing after a gap of many years.
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