Night Flight - a poem about the coming of dawn

I spent sixteen years as an RAF navigator on C130s and have seen many a twilight turning to dawn. This poem is about one of them, or perhaps an amalgamation of several. It is a magical time of day when viewed from 31,000 feet.

Dawn from a C130 cockpit (Photo by David Lynn)

Two-thirds the speed of sound and six miles high

and yet it seems we're stationary in flight,

as slow we gallop through the darkling sky,

our hooves on cobblestones this turbid night.

Soft traceries of orange faintly glow,

suggesting warmth and shelter found within,

like tatters of mantilla lace that flow

to veil protruding bones and lambent skin.

Dark spectres hide the Zamboangan coast;

a puppet show of broken clouds that drift

across the basalt sea, each small grey ghost

deceiving those who take the graveyard shift.

And, poised on high, a hemisphere recedes,

a tilted bowl of rice for starving men,

whose polished grains of fractured moonlight feed

such minds as seek the nourishment of Zen.

Her twin becomes a silver boat confined

upon our wing, a crescent blur in form.

It holds its pace with us, as though inclined

to steal a ride towards the nascent dawn.

Illumination spreads across the land,

a phosphorescent manna for mankind,

a speckled shoal of fish, a sleight of hand,

that tempts a fishing fleet to drop behind.

I idly watch them slide, in retrograde,

as though impelled towards a vortex, deep

beneath the sea, where fabled mermaids played

sweet songs to lull such fishermen to sleep.

Our unrelenting tumult, in full swing,

impels us south to greet our manatees.

Meanwhile the mirrored moon drifts down our wing

and sails into the burnished, metal seas.

As our diurnal sphere shakes off the night,

impatiently new horses start to neigh.

Apollo's coach will soon begin its flight,

to shine a searing light on this new day.