Crossing the Alps Alitalia,
holding down my dinner with my terror,
reading "sicurezza" guff:
shoots and hatches, oxygen on tap.

Come on! There's no escape:
there's a ratatouille of metal and mashed humanity
and everyone screaming their throats out
on the way down
or there's an instant atomizing flash
where no-one whispers out of turn.

As well, though, between tremors
there's this field of peaks,
expanse of high sierras
I'm altitudinally challenged by:
the only way I've seen them's from above.

The Alps have their say:
remember us when you are down,
especially the one your boyhood marvelled at,
the one you cut-collaged from magazines
and traced from Worlds of Knowledge,
your perfect peak, our Matterhorn.

High sierras talk, get left behind.
I get back to my lap-top oatmeal,
the prospect of landing and the prospect of you.
And when I'm safe, an arrival in your arms,
here's what I'll say:
I want to see the Matterhorn with you,
I want to see the Alp that mattered
and I want to see it with you:
I'll even fly again (the horror, the horror)
to realize a dream of rock and ice with you.