Thursday 21 July 2011

The Zeppelin

(Thanks to Phoebe Halstead for the drawing. Her art can be found here: http://phoebemayhalstead.blogspot.com/)



"Look outside: a bright day,
a bright sky. Clear as snow
plains of the Arctic."

The boy looks and sees
blue cheeks. A sun for a smile,
but the emptiness is a frown.

Empty is nothing.
It is a frozen existence,
and the sky needs a shape.

"What would you like to see?"
Santa speaks and the boy
trusts. He asks for the greatest gift.

So the old man draws a zeppelin:
as light as paper-thin ice,
as sweet as freshwater,

the airship nestles in a colony
of clouds. Little human dots feast
in the gondola: on fish and fruit.

"They will see the world,
towards the East,
and back to the West.

They will visit the mountains,
and civilisations of breadth
you will not believe.

Towers and ziggurats,
marsupials and wildebeests
and icecaps dancing on the sea."

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