The Pilot

The old man with the white whiskers,

Flies his little single-engine prop plane,

Perilously close to the road below, strafing a cowering auto

Which cuts through fields of dark corn, as behind us, behind him at least

(as I am mere passenger on his midnight aerial cruise)

The screaming erupts into the night, and I comment,

--Someone is being killed back there.

--But is this presently occurring, or just an echo?

He looks into the black, star-strewn sky above and tells me,

--I know.

And later, when I try to shower all the filth of him away,

The wizened old goat face with the straggling hair and beard lock me

In the hotel bathroom,

And I know that like a shower scene in a certain movie,

The next night's screaming will come from me.