The image in this poem comes from the common experience of a car driving past a wreck on the freeway. It plays on the inability, in the midst of busyness, to stop and see the pain in another lives. Instead, we often need to trivialize or minimize pain in order to carry on at the pace we want to live. It pains me to think how much of our hearts we neglect because of someone's rule to produce, accomplish and survive. Isn't life a bit more significant that this?
Response to Footfall by Julie Maclean
words squeak out
a tight throat
fingering someone else’s
phone
describing scenes
shaped like pen in hand
turning over
words in order to
twist until
we make some sense
common things slip away
into the nothingness we all long for
but a bit too afraid
to glimpse it
in the car scratches
and angry faces
didn’t you know
people still yell
on telephones
imagining body language
can be observed
by those voices in our heads
driving by them, we
only breath a
moment
then remark something
about traffic
biting our tongue
to keep from swearing
in front of the kids
is this all the work our will has done
in rushing years of practice
only to bite
and a blink
(as if nothing happened)
when
their last breath
squeezes
out
like
a
blinking
flame
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