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Written by Patrick McGuinness
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Noon at the Doubletree
From here the river looks like a road
surprised by its own keen swerve,
the boaters stitching the water’s skin as above them
a Boeing rends the sky and the sky heals over.
It’s all inaudible through
the triple-glazed panes, but by something in that
improbable clear blue we know it’s heavy with noise,
drenched in spent jet fuel,
and the bright blue emptiness
is emptiness only, a desert of burned-off ozone
where the sun’s ferocious waste scatters
its perfect, equalising light.
Shadows straighten up,
level with the shapes that throw them – house, high-rise,
Hummer – then disappear, and for a moment
all is its original, unencumbered self.
The clock’s hands cross.
The two halves of the day come face to face.
The grainy, detailed hours have reached their zenith,
now they fall away.
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