John Samuel Tieman: Then

nothing goes away
in the darkness you can hear
light finding its way

– and if one night, sitting in an airplane, quiet but for the whine of an engine, if you question the wind, your air speed, the machine, if you question anything that is still in motion, the building being built, the building imploding, if at that moment, that night, something lands or flies away because of a question, a question that reminds you of the moan of an owl, then that night on final approach, the table upright and locked, the belt tightened, the landing lights still in the sky, then –

in long term parking
you scrape ice off your windshield
then on the way home
there’s a cross beside the road
for those haunted by the dead

—

Copyright 2016 John Samuel Tieman