Night Flight: An Atlantic crossing

Eight hours speeding headlong across the Atlantic, a northward sweep up to flirt with Greenland and kiss off the drowsily amorous towns of southern England. The computer tells a comatose cabin we are currently over The Hague, and then there it is – the European coast. In the hazy dawn, factories glimmer below, metal roofs lit up like orange day-glo. Suddenly, another airliner streaks by us, trailing a coffee-creamer splurt in its wake.
Lakes gleam with impossible promises like newly minted pennies in a dingy wishing well. The sun rises over the toilet-bowl lip of the world, harsh to the bleary eye, uncovering the plumes trailing behind Frankfurt red-eyes that crack the blue bathroom tile of the sky.