when we left home forever

You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings -- there are no such things. There are only middles.

Robert Frost

I remember the motors
great round silver beasts
grasping the burnished wing
that stretched to the end of the world
outside my window
on that day in spring
when we left home forever

I remember the motors
rumbling into life
belching oily clouds
setting on their growling purpose
to bond us to the migrant clouds
on that day in spring
when we left home forever

I remember the motors
flaming through the night
their talons rasping at the air
carrying us on their shoulders
so far above a vast dark ocean
on that day in spring
when we left home forever

I remember the motors
painted with beads of light
as we slipped down the vaporous canyons
between the impossible sky
and the flat green land
on that day in spring
when we left home forever

I remember the motors
click click clicking to a halt
moaning from the labour
of bringing searchers
to this strange place
on that day in spring
when I was a hopeful child