LEAVE THE SKIES TO THE BIRDS, DOWN TO EARTH WHERE YOU BELONG

LEAVE THE SKIES TO THE BIRDS, DOWN TO EARTH WHERE YOU BELONG

I watch you make me your news
With others talking about me in hushed tones
You call me havoc
You call me delay
You ask if this I really know,
lost days you cannot replay.


You call me all things pretty unsavoury
Thanks to me your plans have all gone awry
You drape me in colourful words and brand me tawdry
But to you I refuse extend even a sorry.


I say down to earth you flightless birds
Leave the skies to the real birds
Down to earth where you belong
You’re all just human after all.


Nothing surpasses nature’s fury
I find your so called technology
Tiny and puny
You delight in kinetics and trivial mathematics
But I am something beyond magic
You can call me the Lord’s mechanic.


I paint your skies in hazy mosaic
And send all of Europe into shivers and panic
From JFK to Gatwick
I remain your topic
You look up to your skies and call me ash volcanic


In days past I quilted your skies
Blanketing them in a sea of ash
And left you looking all black and grey
With a few others reeling sad and blue.
I spin a yarn and thread a twine
I sometimes think the spider a cousin of mine


I soar and dip
Unfurl my wings
And hold sway like a mighty wind
For days on end I leave you in ash
I am your ashen picture in the sky
But I’m neither bird nor plane
I am just your friend the volcanic ash.


All too soon here comes the wind
Tossing me from side to side
Like a distressed ship in a Bermuda storm
I retreat further into calmer climes
Back to Iceland from whence I came
Goodbye friends, let’s do this again.