by Lana Hechtman Ayers.
Dawn began with the sight
of red lights
flashing on numerous trucks
crowded by the beach entrance,
some emergency that brought out
fireman and state police,
sheriff and ambulance.
And now, as daylight moves
toward dusk
a doe, ears pitched upright,
perhaps by the clacking
of my old keyboard,
pauses its chewing
of the native salal,
stares into my open window
with eyes that seem to see
right through me
and my fallow pursuit of words.
How swiftly the world shifts
from safety to siren,
every hour some new threat
opens like bud, ripens like berry,
and all the while crows frolic
in the broken-glass-strewn grass,
sparrows flitter across
live electrical wires,
and remain largely unharmed.
We humans come into this life
entirely reliant
on others for survival,
but shortly thereafter
come to understand
death is the inevitable
through-line
for everyone,
and only luck and bluster
get us most of the way there intact.
It is a fact that our home planet
spins on an axis,
though we seem fixed & upright
as the sky wheels its day star
and night moon through the pane
of ever-changing horizon.
What lies ahead
is more of the same,
and nothing we imagine.
This morning’s emergency,
our next-door neighbor tells me,
when I am out in the evening
walking with my two dogs,
was a surfer taken under the waves
by riptide, drowning,
fighting for his life,
as one after another
family member rushed in to help,
succumbing to the omnipotent
seawater themselves.
“But one stranger dove in and rose
again, so everyone left breathing,” he said.
“Good news in the end.”
And that seems a fitting summary
for what we all want—
breathing in every hour
until the good news
of our demise arrives,
and hopefully, it is good news—
because we lived with joy
despite all the pain
that came calling
once and again,
but also vanished for stretches,
and we watched with awe
the inquisitive deer
watching us,
munching idly on leaves,
and we dipped a toe
or two or a few
into the almighty ocean,
and we told ourselves
over and over
the very stories
we wanted to hear.