[This most recent poem, inspired by the view from Guararapes-Gilberto Freyre International Airport in Recife on a nowadays rare foray into the outside world, was originally composed with a view to celebrating my planned leaving of Brazil for the first time in 25 years. That departure has yet to come to pass but the poem remains. It has a 14-line sonnet-like structure.]



View 

The view sprawls out from Bon Voyage,
from vultures circling the landfill,
from battlefield where church repelled
invading Dutch to hill-ascending algal
bloom of slum and concrete river.

In middle-ground, workers ply jets
with fuel and prechilled food and keep
the rainbowed tarmac of the runway clean,

while, at my feet, a yellow bem-te-vi,
trapped by the fake canopy of sky that is
the airport roof, hops round and pecks at scraps
of rice strewn on the un-swept food-hall floor.
As if this transitory stopping-place meant to provide 
some sort of haven for every fleeing flying thing.

_{Photo by David Emrich on Unsplash}