Lightshow

Watch from Acton from the fourth floor:
when the sun's angle on cloudless
summer evenings pales the sky
the light catches jets approaching
westwards down to Heathrow.
 
First a mild twinkle over Hampstead
then each blazes like an auspicious star
gliding in a yellow halo as though
enchanted by the dust of Tinkerbell.
 
As they descend the physics changes:
the caravan of floating lanterns
drop in sequence from the beam,
candles snuffed out by geometry.
 
And later, in the dusk’s blue hour
all the lights wink out together
like the closing of a fairground
or motes in a blade of noon
vanishing as the curtain draws.

John Grice

If you have any thoughts about this poem, John Grice   would like to hear them