Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I think of you that last day
Happy–probably drunk,
but I couldn’t tell
(I never could).
You were having such a good
time plotting a prank on an old
friend’s son over a soccer jersey.

You were happy that moment,
a slice between 2 and 2:15 while
we talked. Me, at work far away,
and you, in our house in the pines.
I promised to try
sending a document to the park,
so you could work again that
summer, the one you never saw.

At the light on Eastern Ave
And Eastern Boulevard (yes–
there is such a triangle where
the street cars once turned
around because it was all dirt
roads after–only trees and river),
I got the first call.

At the light made at east and
east, where street cars turned
yet stopped running late in the
fifties, years before we were born
on the same year but a number
of bus stops apart,
I got that first call.

It doesn’t really matter where
you are when life stops. You can
be driving alone when a huge oak
throws itself into your path, like
that man who lives up the road
when we lost power last week.
Bless him for living through it.
That tree toppling from sodden
Anchors lifting after a hundred
years of holding on like I might
have, but no, I left you there.

Was there a short in the wall to
make the house burn that hot?
Bent frame of a sofa bed tossed
out the pictured window that blew
fire into the woods and alerted the
neighbors. How long did you burn?

Or when fate takes the bridge right
out from underneath you like the Key
crumbled and tumbled six souls, like
overripe berries into the cereal bowl
of the harbor–rocks, asphalt, metal,
trucks, and men,
crashing down and snatched by
the current or trapped in metal.

I hope they died quickly–without
knowing, like they tell me you did.

I hope that woman who was abducted
outside the mall where she laughed
with friends moments before, knew nothing
after she was struck in the head and thrown
into the trunk of the car.

I hope it was lights out. Nothing more.

Today at Eastern and Eastern,
I pause and hope the phone fails to ring.
I hold my breath, mumble-whisper
a Hail Mary–pray for us, sinners, now
and at the hour of our death.
(Mary and my hopes know each other well
these days.) The light changes and I drive on,
holding my breath as I pass the restaurant
where I pulled over that night unable to shift
our little car anymore–

all confusion. Trying to ring you and hearing
it go to message. So fast. They say your were
gone then. Smoke and heart, heat and gin–
all bad decisions. We all make them. We all
drive through intersections without knowing