Night Flight Poem by Les Brighton

What do they think
Up there on the flight deck
Drawing these four hundred lives on through the dark
At 30,000 feet over Europe?
Do they feel the weight, the pressure
Of all these dreams and fears
Of all these journeys
United by coincidence tonight
Into a single journey?

What do the strewn stars speak
As the crew navigate alone unsleeping
Or is it the diode's blink
And the dial's glow
That capture all attention?

***

In the light of day landscape
And weather dominate the eye;
Beneath the stars a more human geography.
Against the black earth sparks of light lie spilled
Like glitter from a child's party
Caught in the carpet, vacuum-proof.

Waking at 3: 00am I watch the wing's shadow
Silently devouring towns.

Down there a nursing mother pushes back a lock of hair
A night guard walks an arc-lamped factory yard
A child lies limb-sprawled down the sheets
And lovers against the cold lie closely curled like spoons.

Does God feel the pity as I do,
The ache of all these pricks of light scattered out across the night?
What does his love mean for all us travelers in the dark?

***

The engines pull us on, the wings stretch wide,
The video display predicts an accurate arrival.
Knowing who pilots, can I have less faith than this?
Dark, cold and stars are not everything.

Although eyes strain for meaning in the night
I know below the horizon something waits.
God's hidden purpose will one day be seen
The sweet earth swing at last into the Light.