Peace Plane
By Niall Twohig
The fighter jet rumbles overhead, greedily,
breaking the sound barrier and our conversation in two.
Something this loud knows
it’s worth more than us, more than this conversation:
$177 million, in fact.
Sitting with that sound, with the heat, with our forced silence
I remember lines from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project:
“The bombers remind us of what Leonardo da Vinci expected of man in flight: that he was to ascend to the skies 'in order to seek snow on the mountaintops and bring it back to the city to spread on the sweltering streets in summer.”
The fighter jet rumbles overhead, again,
as if to shout, “It’s not yet your turn!”
Sit with this sound, too.
Let it disturb part of you
But not the deeper Whole.
Find the peace it cannot overshadow,
the peace its noise and bombs cannot touch.