“Tigers Waiting” by Zach Fechter

There’s a flicker in sight,

The last carrying crows emerging on the cross;

There’s a break in the earth,

A floating woman in the valley;

And there’s a room up there,

A silent still waiting bear;

And I see blurry things,

And from them a vision:

 

Twenty centuries hence,

A boy above a red sky

Stares down the path,

Quiet in the wreckage,

And he will see a tree-lined avenue

To the stairs of the last pyramid,

A final transport from old Alexandria,

Calling for everlasting life,

Calling with a faint voice,

And he will fall in love with the faint voice.

 

And twenty centuries hence,

When the king chases foxes

Among brown leaves,

And the boy climbs the dirt

Steps to the blinding sun,

And the skin is slick with sunscreen,

And the strong take his hand,

And they turn into the next.

 

And across the desert

The great lasting of the boy,

The great green collapsing

With an old breathe,

And the blackened eyes

Of a now brown boy

Looking upon the silent

And shifting dunes,

And he sees what we

Will all see:

Tigers waiting in the crumbling wind…