Promptly Poetry

Emigration

Emigration

The flight from Africa
to the land of my birth
on a cut-price, elusive itinerary,
Eight hundred miles in the wrong direction,
Johannesburg on the first day,
and a plane, Belgian in colours,
Afrikaans inside,
so to Nairobi in Kenya,
midnight concourse, sleeping Asians,
benches filled and none waking.
Then to the upper air,
dawn breaking over the endless Sahara,
and landfall in Athens
but stay in the plane
before the sideways step,
islands speckling the blue Mediterranean,
and Madrid airport, a bite to eat,
with grim-faced policemen attending.
Here the plane empties,
most of the passengers,
protesting but ignored,
their luggage strewn upon the tarmac,
off in some coach to Portugal,
maybe,
and we remnant ensconced in space,
aloft and bound for fog-laden Belgium
as night falls over Europe.
Diverted to Luxembourg,
disembarked into frozen air
and piled snow in corners,
bussed to the station
and a train through the darkness,
countryside racing past the windows,
Frenchmen breathing in the smoke
and an underground station in Brussels.
A brief sleep in a tatty hotel,
a stale sandwich in haste,
and so to the airport
and a wait with the sparrows
under the glass dome of patience
brings us to the home comforts of British Airways
and Heathrow, city of the dazed
and jet-lagged
to find the right bus
flying over the chimneys of the horizon
of an ancient and tired capital.
Thus to a vast and echoing station,
a brief train ride to Kent,
a taxi and final arrival
in the frost and snow before Christmas.

Three days and nights of relentless journey,
we suffered for our need for home but,
like most things,
it was all for the best.


Line count: 54
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry, Week 41
Prompt: Write a poem about a physical journey you have been on.