Panoramic

Panoramic

The god’s-eye view clasps you in its concrete grasp,
Envelops your mind with its cloak of stillness;
Terrain unchanged for endless eternity
Dazzles with awesome spectacularity.
Red-brown rocks point sharply skywards,
Stark shapes in a barren landscape,
A river in the depths of the canyon
Threads its drunken course through stone desert,
Scorching white sunlight refracts on flowing, fluid glass and disperses,
Leaving wisdom older than man hanging in the air,
Floating up to your leather throne
Where, godlike, you sit suspended precariously.
That timeless knowledge shatters your omnipotence,
Flooding you with a sea of emotion unknown.

The throbbing engine-music lands in your ears,
Calming, soothing; an unearthly serenity smothers the spirit
As your brain is lulled into blissful mesmerity,
Wonder, enchantment, building inside
Like a foetal kick in the belly,
Rhyming with the gentle up-down motion of the plane.
You look at the miniature world below,
Watch a toy truck, black with diesel fumes, jolting along a dirt track,
Feeling isolated, yet safe, in your airborne womb.

Like a respectful shadow, freedom beckons you:
An invitation to go where you will,
Unbounded by earthly ties;
Space and time are yours, elastic, infinite, controlled.
Deserts, cities, mountains, forests and seas crawl by,
As if bewitched, while you remain frozen in place, motionless.
Then, as you watch, the ruby sun sinks beneath the horizon,
That magic region between sky and earth
Where reality transcends fantasy.