Perplexities

Issue 8 | Summer 2022 |

 

 

1.   How a bullet can come through a window,
      land in the dog’s water dish
      just beside the man standing in the kitchen.
      On the news they said it seemed to come from nowhere;
      amazingly, it touched no one on the way.
 
2.   In only one generation,
      the wings of the swallows who live near the highway
      have shortened, to make their flight more precise
      so they can swerve quick, avoid fast traffic.
      The survivors pass along their secrets.
 
3.   All week, the rain’s
      litany of sadnesses drums on my roof.
      How it keeps pouring; the creek rushes,
      rises up over its banks, washes out the road.
      I stay dry inside.
 
4.   Though thousands of asteroids
      zoom through space and our telescopes
      watch for close-calls, not one
      has collided with earth in quite a while.
      We rely on blind luck.
 
5.   The way orphaned girls in a country
      across the sea have taught themselves
      to sing together unaccompanied and teach
      the young ones perfect harmony
      made of loneliness and truth.
 
6.   How two strangers’ eyes meet
      on a crowded train and each recognizes
      something familiar in the other, and
      they get to choose whether or not
      to speak of it, or forever pass up the chance.
 
7.   How the rain eventually stopped.
      How it always does. How there is so much
      to clean up after everything slowly dries out
      and we can see what is salvageable
      and what is lost.