Of Course! There Will be Hearings

// Simon Perchik

Of course! there will be hearings
but everyone knows this graveyard
is where the new municipal airport

— there will be speeches, blueprints
with the usual shovel inscribed
never used again :these tombstones

trust runways, want the bulldozers
— so gentle, all that weight, gathered
and overhead the way a warm breeze

makes room, will name the planes
for clouds and places far away
though the mayor points

it’s here the town will grow
travelers will stay and you
have already forgotten the cold

— you will hear in all directions
birdcalls miles long — for the lost night

surrounded by stones
airborne again, rising from your name
toward nowhere and the tower.