Suppose Death, driving a black Dodge Ram
with custom chrome-aluminum wheels,
causes a multi-car pile-up outside of Tacoma
scoring two fatalities, then one more,
by forcing a target-bound woman off the road at Exit 234.
Suppose he barrels off at a rest stop
somewhere in Oregon. A toothpick hanging
out of the left side of his mouth
he lolls in the noon-day sun
against one of the wooden poles
supporting a plastic encased state map.
Death holds a cold cup of free coffee,
and scans his surroundings. Suppose
a thirty-something guy
with blond dreadlocks and empty eyes
crouches outside the restroom entry
next to a scrappy backpack,
a corrugated cardboard sign
and his angelic four year old son
scratching the dirt with a sharp stick.
Suppose the Grim Reaper, with a sly smile,
strolls over and slips the child a five.
The child puts the finishing touch
on his stick-figure super-hero,
lifts his head and gazes up.
Pushing silky curls from his brow
he meets the Reaper’s grimace
with a wide-open sun-bright smile.
Suppose Death, suddenly startled,
has a change of heart.
He abandons the Dodge,
pinches a red Porsche convertible,
jumps over its driver’s-side door,
settles into a white leather bucket seat,
and peels back out on I-5–
pedal floored, face windward, beach hair blown toward eternity.
Sandra Rokoff-Lizut came to poetry at the age of seventy-one and finds that it feeds her well. She has had quite a few poems published in fine journals. She is honored to be surrounded by a wealth of great teacher-mentors within a supportive poetry community.