COLETTE BRYCE

Wish You Were

Here, an aftertaste of traffic taints
the city's breath, as mornings
yawn and bare this street

like teeth. Here, airplanes leaving
Heathrow scare this house
to trembling; these rooms protect

their space with outstretched walls,
and wait. And evenings fall
like discs in a jukebox, playing

a song called Here, night after night.
Wish you were. Your postcards
land in my hall like meteorites.

+

Through the cabin window's haze
we watch the black shadow of our plane
free itself from the underarriage,
separate, then fall away.

With it falls the sunlit runway,
grids of crops and reservoirs, then all
the scattered glitter of a city
falls, the tattered coastline of a country

plunges out of view.
And just when you might expect to see
the globe in brilliant clarity,
cloud fills the tiny screen

and we, who haven't taken off
at all, wait, seatbelts on,
for the world to turn and return to us
as it always does, sooner or later,

to fix itself to the craft again
at a point marked with the shadow of a plane,
pencilled now on a runway, growing
larger under Irish rain.

'Wish You Were' is taken from The Heel of Bernadette (Picador, 2000)
'+' is taken from The Full Indian Rope Trick (Picador, 2004)