Doug Roy, Three Dog Night, Cut Paper
Lost on the Runway
Delta lost the dog
like a suitcase or sunglasses,
days of silence, no one on the line
in Atlanta cages the strays
stared with hopeful eyes
none of them the ones
they said come back later
maybe they would bring her
from the gate, a traveler on a plane
that never arrived, escaped
in a blur of black on tarmac,
into the sky
no how or why, where
she went only that she was gone
like a star when night ends
still there
just gone
_________________
James Croal Jackson
Review by Ben Sloan
One reason the final lines of this poem–“still there / just gone”–are so resonant is because when we lose something we love, the “still there”-ness of the object of our love has to do with how (obviously) the love and connection we feel does not evaporate just because its object is gone. Part of the mystery of “love” is how it hangs in there and persists despite seeming impossible odds, that the platform on which it was built is gone, “just gone,” yet the love (by sheer magic it seems) levitates there, maybe forever.