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The Travellers
Michael Brown
In the quiet evening I stare up towards the sound an aeroplane makes in the sky. Already it is somewhere else, above open fields, an unknown town, a trading estate. I watch what’s left of its thin contrail blur then peter-out— becoming cloud, becoming air. Once, when I was twelve, a girl taught me to dance. I touched her hand. A sudden racket of the heart. That perfect arc of something passing then a sense it was never there. From way down here on solid ground we can’t know when or where such distant things will land.
Michael recently completed an MPhil at Newcastle University where his research focused on the Scottish poet, John Glenday and on uncertainty in lyric. In 2024 he won the Overton Poetry Prize and was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. His first collection, Where Grown Men Go, was published by Salt in 2019.
