Airport

Donald Justice – spin off

The speaker in Justice’s poem ‘Bus Stop’ comments on the brevity and mortality of life by using the image of a bus stop as a place where no one person stays for a long period of time. As a metaphor, this works well. The speaker describes people who ‘stand in the rain’ with ‘umbrellas out’ and ‘black flowers’. The imagery has dark undertones, which ultimately suggests that we all die and that life is but a bus stop that we all are waiting at. The penultimate verse ‘And lives go on. And lives go on/ Like sudden lights/ At street corners’ suggests the moment of death. Perhaps I am reading too much into the morbidity of the poem. Let’s see how mine goes!

Airport

Flashing letters spell destinations

On a large black screen

Where voices fill this empty space

And fade to nothing.

Silent faces can’t express my

Anticipation at the thought of

Flying through the sky with these

Other faces waiting for the end.

The announcement seeps through

The intercom and hushes the humming voices.

I look up and the fluorescent light blinds.