Parking Lot Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The parking lot

No seagulls are flying high today, sitting on roofs and shrieking
to each other, and sometimes there is a clash of wings
There are no ships at anchorage in the bay waiting for a pilot
on this day of stillness under a grey sky and lacklustre clouds
there is no promise of a better tomorrow.
The supermarket's parking lot is looking down at a cemetery
here we have the mainstay of human life the price of food
and the cost of a funeral, food is needed, and death is avoided.
People walking among gravestones, some are humble some
are posh with the picture of the deceased on.
None of these matters in the long run; the supermarket will
close and move somewhere else, the death's place will be
ploughed under and potatoes planted, time is a sticking plaster
when the plaster falls off, death has a plot out of town next
door to the glorious new supermarket