Tether

You know by the hum of your seat you're still in the air.

A girl's doll stares blindly up from a black carry-on, the girl

asleep against her window, outside which death ignores you

both in limitless space, frilly cloud.  Look—it's empty out there

as you sit with your icy drink, wings shadowing whatever passes

beneath.  The last thing you remember is the bed of tulips

as you hustled down the concrete path outside your home.

You had no reason to look back, no face to find in the glass,

but because the wind was blowing, the flowers appeared to shake

their heads no, no to you.  They live their whole lives as if in earth-

quake.  Imagine—an existence moved by invisible, immutable

force this way then that, and no choice but to go with it.