Before my jump across the ocean Switching hemispheres in tidy motion I survived the airport crawl Got to the gate before last call Another stamp in my passport In life another visit short A hundred times around the sun before, it was differently done Taking months in uncalm seas Less of she’s and more of he’s Land in squares, ‘new’ worlding parcelled out like hot pudding Half a millennia ago, first men did Go round the world, the globe unhid In crazy voyages of possession Naming for fame, owning obsession ‘Savages’ astonished, cousins long-lost Communal view at their cost Wiped out too fast through guns and greed New disease, new aliens, new seed Thirteen thousand years before Humans reached the southernmost shore Now abandoned in the past We realise not when the die is cast Triggering extinctions along the way We stumble on look back dismay Resistance often comes too late When all is lost should we abate? No. We push on hoping naively Better will come however briefly And change inevitably unrolls With angels mundane and devious trolls During my jump across the ocean Sleepless brief infernal locomotion Hell on Earth is Economy Class Limbs akimbo dark aisles to pass Such a pain to cross the Atlantic Transiting life so unspeakably frantic Not forgetting others who made the trip Against their will on a slaving ship Round and square we all adventure Shaping our impossible debenture The costs they mount as we progress Always betting on the future
