John Samuel Tieman: Half Past

for David Falk

take fireflies for example
when you were a kid you caught
them in a bottle and let them
flicker themselves to death
in your bedroom

fifty years later and with A. L. S.
you feel each day
not as a loss but as just
a little less than yesterday
someone suggests a blood count

you suggest a vein or a hollow
bone or a chart which records
nothing but the next
nerve that won’t fire
for now you still walk

an evening routine that leads
past the park to the forest
that leads you to chart
just at dusk what’s left
of the half-light caught in a tree

—

copyright 2015 John Samuel Tieman