Nana Ollerenshaw

—Photo by Philippe Noret

VA 777 – 300

Sleek
a mammoth dorsal fin,
laterals wing back to lift
a fuselage that narrows to a cone,
tiny unkind eyes and pointed nose
sharp enough to split and ease
the space it lives in
when it isn’t beached at gate
empty of its people,
still with the stillness
of having run the distance.
But its soul—a maw louder
than all lions with one throat,
cavernous with awful atom-splitting power,
sweeps freight past continents and seas,
indifferently.
If metal has a soul
it would be a soul to match
the menacing of cloud outside the porthole
the broad unearthly scape
of emptiness
beyond the thin divide.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.