Gary LeBel

The Tailor’s Tape

There’s a heavy smell of jet fuel as the helicopter idles, both doors wide open; the pilot waits. Blue lights flash. An ambulance and two police cruisers wait. They block the road, I wait.

One feels one’s heart being thrown down a flight of stairs. Who threw it? Was it empathy, idle sympathy, the dark, little shadow of indifference, the bitter taste of inevitability?

At the hotel, a few hours of unease pass as Tranströmer’s tailor, Death, moves round my room taking my measurements.

---

Note: “A Tailor’s Tape” alludes to the second stanza of Tomas Tranströmer’s “Black Postcards”:

Halfway through your life, death turns up
and takes your pertinent measurements. We forget
the visit. Life goes on. But someone is sewing
                                           the suit in the silence.

(translation by Robert Bly)

---

About the Author

Gary LeBel is an artist-poet living in the greater Atlanta area whose poems have appeared in journals throughout the USA, the UK, Japan, and India. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage.