How can you say
you didn’t know
how quickly life can fall apart?
It happens all the time.
A two-year-old just right there one moment
slips beneath sparkling water,
breathes in, breathes out, turns blue.
Someone texting “I’m almost there”
looks up to see the car ahead
stopped for the golden retriever
chasing the ball into the street.
Too late brakes screech.
Real-life bumper cars crash.
The dog yelps and the eyes of the boy,
wide with horror, dim.
He was just playing with his dog.
Life comes unmoored all the time
with stock phrases:
“I want a divorce.”
“I’m afraid it’s cancer.”
“We have to let you go.”
“I regret to inform you”
that life is always slipping away.
Ask the soldier who just got a light
from his buddy next to him
before he stepped on a mine
and was blown into sudden fire,
while he survived asking, “Why?”
never suspecting, though knowing,
it happens all the time.
Somewhere right now someone
is watching a steady monitor decline
into oblivion, wondering
what could have been done
that wasn’t.
Or they’re watching paramedics try in vain
to start the heart of one who
was just having her morning coffee
before sudden collapse.
A virus slips into a cell
and begins giddy proliferation,
commandeering, hot-wiring
nuclear material to go on
its killing spree before anyone
can think to call 911.
All around lives crumple.
Ask any cop, ICU or ER nurse;
they’ll tell you.
It happens all the time—
the hand reaching to pick
the novel fruit,
thinking nothing of it
as all around creation groans.
The prophets see and warn
but too few listen
to the depressive coots
until the sudden something
surprises them, too,
eyes widening before slipping
beneath the drowning knowledge.