I propose there’s nothing quite like having children to really underscore the intense vagaries of consciousness linked to our general mortality.  Over the past 24 hours, I first remained sleeplessly intent upon the small gurglings of my son’s struggling breaths, and then had to take my brain in firm hand to move beyond the morbid what-ifs of a scarcely missed car accident.  Both engendered fear, but dread is certainly compounded by powerlessness.  A bit odd, that steering a wheel ultimately places fate out of one’s hands.

Here’s a poem about it:

 

Echoing barks not quite coughs

able to clear passageways sharply

eyes open to the ceiling’s blank witness

in soundings dull

swift accumulations silently fill

lungs small enough to weaken

by a thimbleful of ills alone in the dark.

Quickly side to side, smooth ribs balmed

quick fingers unceasing tapping tap the small terrain of your back

brown eyes reflect the dark and stare

one to another in calm focus

shifting these particular fluids of life

and bodies together.

 

The next day you are fine

and note the glass of the windows before

a drive in the truck also named

emphatically voicing all that is same.

Sky bright, distant trees, songs to please

you do not see the battered rolling wreck

it might be a grill? Still settling roadside

A man’s brief, frightened face striding

back to a mistake, it just happened

to hit no one but missing us all

nothing to call it or save you

but chance.