Perplexities
From Orange Blossom Review • Summer 2022
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.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.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.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.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.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.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.