For Paul Brookes’ challenge, a poem inspired by Terry Chipp’s painting, Evening canal.

Postcards

Sighs of longing fill the airport lounge,
enticed by images unpeopled,
the idyll in their silence,
architectural lines of stone rising from water
or empty piazze, parklands scattered with birds,
yet they draw such crowds,
the world is sinking beneath their weight.

The lines of summer migrants gather, swarm,
flying hither and yon to see what cannot be seen
beneath the crawling locust-skin
of crunching, clacking, insect-clicking hordes.

If stillness ever fell, would they listen,
would they hear the voice that asks, why?