For Roy Chadwick (Aircraft designer)

In that pure moment
Of silken glistening
The spirits were quiet
And stilled and listening

To the mind that soared
On the wind and the wings
In the darkening meadow
Where twilight brings
These whispered words….

Watch me silent as the hawk
The ghost that drives the noiseless owl
Above the field where down below
The roaring Merlins strain and howl

For I am all your futures now
The shape that’s poised and shimmering
On the runway from that shadowed past
And the twilight’s final glimmering.