Marcus Aurelius in Luton Airport Meditates

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They fail to inform you when you are born

All matter is most impermanent

That push-chair where you ruled as potentate

Assured a maharaja’s sweets and lollies

Swivels in reality

Into an airport trolley

You are luggage that your parents push

Toward certainty of Departure

Teenage years you lurk and sulk between the shops

But there is nothing offered Duty Free

This airborne world is solid hurt

A Boarding Card just puts you on

A Budget Flight   –   on top of that

Your food and drink are not part of the Package

You forage a depleted Iceland shelf

For something cleanly virtuous and vegan

Emerging from its hieroglyphic cave

An ancient urban man who scrolls a code

Googling in a pre-dawn hour his flight

Into that Night of Nights from which he came

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Bernard Saint
Illustration Claire Palmer

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