New Stones in the River: A Life Insured

Chance

insures—

earns

those born

the right

to pass.

Watching from the passenger seat as the ambulance passes

in front, slow, down those Sunday streets that chance

placed in my memory. The right

to live replaced, displaced, unlaced, insured

by the born,

a life earned.

There’s a river that runs through town, its waters earned

by the toil of men’s hands. Passing

under bridges, along streets and railways, it is born

astride industry and chance

carving the hill, insuring

prosperity, longevity, human right.

We turn too as the ambulance turns right,

we know she is already gone. “Hold on,” my father earns

the right to say them: those words insuring

a last sliver of hope as it passes,

stream-like, replaced by chance

replacing the dead and the born.

When the river was born,

there were no stones made smooth by the left and right

of its current. Mere chance:

the sight of men throwing jagged gravel in the bed, earning

their own living. The site packs up, passes

when the work is done, with each life insured.

For ten years we’ve been insured

for her death. The years since the river was born,

I have sat on its stony shores, passing

time’s spells: feel roughshod rock turn to velvet as lilies bloom right

from the water’s surface, slowly at first, earning

their place in the sun. Now is your chance.

With lithe petals unfurling as if to say that chance

is just destiny earning

its right.