THE AMBULANCE - NEW POEM

THE AMBULANCE

I’d tend to draw it out

As something pregnant, freighted,

A thing that lodges in the heart

When seen, a bad luck image

That hurts the eye; meaning

Nothing ever very good, usually

Worse than that. Many moving vehicles

Carry ideas in their stride, ambulances

Tend to show more than they hide,

Flashing their bright yellow jackets

Of urgent care, implying pain.

You don’t fix what isn’t broken,

They say, as they speed, make way

For someone else’s trouble, yours

Can wait. We duly step aside, to see

Another world’s quickly departing emergencies.

But today, down the hall, where my window is,

An office now, jerry-built for Covid-times,

Stacked high with papers, books and debts

It’s hard to pay when sales are down,

And books stamped non-essential, hardly,

It slipped a blue swift bird of lights, velocity,

Across my line of sight like a beautiful apprehension

That the natural world, and the world we save,

Are, if not one, then almost the same, and this bird

I glimpsed, fleeting as any arrow shot through woods,

Was branching its own tree as it fled down

Streets to hit some target where they lay, to bury

Deep into the moment a stop or start, carefully

Like any flying creature lands, who also owns the air.

November 13, 2020

Comments

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