Accident Prone

not me!



I am not accident prone. No broken bones for the first 63 years of my life, until I fell down some wet concrete stairs at school in 2011.

However, I have lived with many sisters who had many falls; I mean, many falls each. 

As my sisters and college classmates and I have reached our seventieth year, we've had more and more incidents of falling.  I actually wrote a blog about this a few years ago.


Anyway, here's a poem from my book  How the Hand Behaves:

   Accident Prone

 

 

See the teeth of grinning Fate.

See the ax before it falls.

The mischance wins the throw,

and she falls,

flattened by her haste,

her  inattention.

Over and over again

she lies down before the unexpected ,

undesirable event,

mischance, contingency.

 

Like a vole in the field lying open

to the swooping hawk,

she’s always surprised by the talons of the accidents.

 

Waves of the Atlantic knock her down,

 break her collar bone. Next, she

Falls off the bike, leg with splinter of bone protruding .Next,she

Falls on the icy playground, wrist bolted back together.

Through the years,

Falls on the church steps, funeral parlor entrance, front stoop,

Finally a blood clot to the brain from a fall in the bathtub,

And she’s safe.

 

 

 

not me!