Helicopters
Over time, you picture them
after dark, in searches
focusing on streets and houses
close above the churches
or balancing
on narrow wands of light.
And find so much depends upon
the way you choose
to look at them:
high in the night
their minor flares confused
among the stars, there
almost beautiful.
Or from way back
over the map
from where they might resemble
a business of flies
around the head wound of an animal.
Copyright Credit: This poem first appeared in The Whole & Rain-domed Universe (Picador, 2014).
Source: Poetry (October 2014)