Alva Watches the Previous President Fly Away

Squinting will not bring it back to earth,
the helicopter scraping its way over the gray
TV city, the tops of buildings like lapping
waves that have not, in the moment,
begun to churn, though let’s be honest,
Alva knows the storm is coming. The ground
is falling away. In the corner of the screen,
the chopper is now barely visible because,
somewhere, a producer has asked for more sky.