Learning to fly is half a parachute

31 dead in Siberian passenger plane crash

The Independent, 2 April 2012

Lifting out of the kindest winter, we found ourselves

high in a prematurely blue sky spring, just passengers

following the course of March

on meteorological charts

and tuning in to fortune tellers on television

while down below deck chair flotillas

set sail upon patchwork quilts, their candyfloss

canvases shimmying, seasonal clothing tossed

aside amongst over-optimistic crocuses and daffs.

It was a matter of time before the altimeter crashed,

nose-diving us back to earth. Last time

we saw this much blue sky was 1929.

And now there’s a forecast of snow

laying on Primrose Hill. How were we to know

the early warming

was itself a warning?

We hurry to cover our rooftop hives and bind the fronds of suburban palms

in the run up to easter. But nothing can be done before the snow comes

to protect the pink and white avenues of blossom

or prevent prices rising in grocers this autumn.

So we scramble for our woolen hats and scarves, and wonder

as we tumble like Gabriel and Satan towards the tundra

which it is will cover us —

our insurances, or permafrost.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

New Year's resolution

Fasting once a week could help you live longer

The Telegraph, 19 February 2012

Peter didn’t plan to go so long

without eating. He wasn’t aiming

for a mention in the Guinness

book of fools, freaks and unfortunates.

But he had over-indulged,

and so resolved

as his tyre chains bit into the forest

road home to lose the surplus,

shed the spare, kick

the snacking habit, maybe

next year.

When New Year came

he had already been fourteen days

in the belly of a Volvo stalled

at the side of a glacial road.

Stalactites of his breath tinselled

the rear view mirror, a yellow pond

had frozen where Peter’s feet would be. 

The winding windows in the back opened

onto his larder, where

the richness of Swedish vocabulary

lent variety to his diet

of snow.

Peter didn’t know a month had flown

by. He’d seen through the snow

that the sun had risen and not

set again, and now his white

cocoon sparkled like iced champagne.

Since his body quit

shivering nothing moved, and without movement

what is time? His breathing was shallow and silent.

The silence convinced Peter

he was deaf

or dead. When the world

broke through

Peter’s Volvo-centred igloo,

and green and blue

gushed in

with a scorching

pine-laced gale to the rasping

of blades, the breaking

of seals, he had nothing

to offer his guests.

‘Eat,’ he told Officer Nyberg,

‘snow.’

Peter Skyliberg was found awake and able to speak after spending over two months trapped in his snow-buried car on a Swedish forest road. Scientists think he may have gone into a hibernation state in which his body conserved energy by lowering its temperature.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

What is white and spotted

Snow leopards disappearing?

Kuensel, the newspaper of Bhutan, 16 February 2012

All colours are white

but can you not see

a shady outline

in this frame, or that?

Could that dark polished

stone not be an eye,

that crease of pink rock

a bared tongue or bloodied

fang? Yak herders tell

of leopards forming

out of falling snow,

the border shepherds

of snow drifts thinning

out their blue sheep herds

and leaving behind

only red shadows.

At this altitude

so close to Tibet

we are watchful of

our northern neighbours.

Look more closely, tell

me you see leopards.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet