'Half-moon waning,' 'Bald eagles fishing,' and "When Fate and You Collide"
Half-moon waning
to New – shadows outline
the new house next door
Bald eagles fishing
the riverside – a kingfisher
awaits her turn
When Fate and You Collide
It’s certain we die
but no one knows when
unless it’s the moment
before the shooter
pulls the trigger
or two cars collide.
When particles collide,
energy, which can’t die,
is triggered
and explodes as when
jet planes shooting
into towers made 9/11 momentous.
Public death is of the moment,
on a collision
course with maddened shooters
who want to kill others and die
themselves when
police target them and pull triggers.
Americans live on a hair-trigger,
ready any moment
to depart life when
they and a bullet might collide,
and so they die,
either the one shot or the shooter.
Columbine, VA Tech, Vegas—a shooter
will oblige, pull the trigger
and make you die
in an excruciating moment:
Fate and you collude
just when
you think you’ll survive, but when
you face your shooter
and worlds collide,
he pulls the trigger
and that’s the moment
when you die.
But who knows when that trigger will be pulled
or who the shooter will be the moment
that bullet and you collide, and you die?
George Held, an eleven-time Pushcart nominee, has written or edited 22 poetry books on subjects as varied as war, love, art, and nature in forms such as the haiku, cinquain, triolet, sonnet, villanelle, and sestina. His most recently published poems appear in Blue Unicorn, Better than Starbucks, First Literary Review—East, and Neuro Logical (Ireland).
