FATAL FLIGHTS

“You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.” - Henry Ward Beecher

News item:
“PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – The first sighting off Brazil's coast of possible wreckage from a missing Air France jet signals the start of what could be one of the most challenging operations ever mounted to retrieve the tell-tale "black box." The box, which is in fact two separate devices containing cockpit voice recordings and instrument data, offers the best chance of finding out why the Airbus jetliner vanished in an Atlantic storm en route to Paris with 228 people on board. The devices are designed to send homing signals when they hit water, but merely locating them presents one of the most daunting recovery tasks since the exploration of the Titanic and barring good fortune, could take months, experts said. If they are in waters as deep as some people fear, 4,000 meters (13,100 ft) or more, unmanned submersibles would be tested to their limits. Yet past disasters have led to advances in equipment which do give hope for finding out what happened…”

The poem doesn’t trivialise the disaster, but likens it to another on a more personal dimension whose enormity is comparable in emotional magnitude to the survivors.

Fatal Flights

The flight was doomed
The plane would crash
The sea would swallow it.
As fearful death loomed
As bodies turned to ash
Tears would follow it.

Sad flotsam now marks
The site of death and blight;
And deep sea hides:
Secrets, circling sharks,
Fright, a fatal flight,
Covered by shifting tides…

The black box pings
In ocean depths,
Containing answers;
Does it matter?

*******************

Our love was cursed
Our union would collide
And time devour it.
Rancour we nursed,
As sparks of love died
Hate, as wine would sour it.

Our double soaring wings
Were cut, and down we dived,
From air, we crashed to earth.
Severed are heartstrings
Yet both of us survived
To live a sentient death.

Love letter sings
In a forgotten drawer,
Containing promises;
How it matters!