Felicity Teague

Aviation Age

Our love unnerved him, it had hatched so quick;
he wanted to rebirth us through a shell
designed to shatter slowly: silent, slick,
appropriate. Imprisoned in our cell,

we kept from fledging, though I longed for flight
above the promenade of pin-striped suits,
away from small-town talk in black and white
that specialised in forging ill reputes.

But once we’d journeyed into foreign lands
he let us wanderlust in scarlet skies,
as one, at last, exploring, mouths and hands,
anarchic as the turning falcon flies.

Just seven days, that Aviation Age;
once we were home, he locked us in a cage.

The coming of Eunice

I feel her birth, a rush of warm and wet,
her rise, her fall, the silence at her eye
and then her eager seizure by the jet-
stream’s currents, bearing, blowing, hot and high

from Portugal. She slaps the Scillies first
and rides the Bristol Channel up to me;
the River Severn rolls in rain and BURST!
the fields are overtaken by the sea

and every breath reverberates across
the land – she rips a roof off, snaps a spire
and plays with aeroplanes. One sigh can toss
the clouds and throw the seagulls higher, higher,

until I see them wheeling in the grey
and white above the garden, all askance,
their wings like waves. The trees begin to sway
as, shrieking song, she leads them in her dance

for hours and hours, the cedar, redwood, beech,
the line of ash, the chestnut. Then, she goes,
her farewell flung against my walls. Scrrr...eech!
and I am breathless in our final throes.

Felicity Teague (Fliss) is a copyeditor/copywriter by day and a poet/composer come nightfall. She lives in Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham (UK). Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; she has also been published by The Mighty, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dirigible Balloon and a local Morris dancing group. Other interests include art, film, and photography.