ANNE KENNEDY

 

My address is Flight 10 to Honolulu

 
In the sky I forgot everything, which was probably for the best 
– like childbirth, no going back. A grey hand rushed into 
a grey glove. I found we had brought our own brightness. Then 
living as gods (because frankly who else gets up here?) 
minus an engineer who said even engineers don’t know how 
we stay airborne – but otherwise fine, wine, song, a film, 
a talk with the window at sunset, in fact a bit of an epic, 
all the sex and all the death, all the love, all the utu. 
 
Phew! I pictured a little life down there, in that darkness. 
I’d read the ephemera in the pocket in the seat in front of you 
– scent, linen, summer, the clamour of children clear 
as bells. A smiling husband. A house to put them in. I was 
as good as a god or little artist. At midnight I swear 
it all came roaring up to greet me.
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Kennedy has published five books of fiction and poetry, including A Boy and His Uncle (Picador) and Musica Ficta (University of Queensland Press). She has won several awards, the most recent the Montana New Zealand Poetry Award for 2003. Her newest book is the narrative sequence The Time of the Giants (Auckland University Press). A New Zealander by birth, she currently lives in Honolulu.

 

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