Here’s a poem about last night:

timing

Interviewer: what was the main principle of transportation in your time ?

2000 year-old man: Mostly, Fear…you would see a wild animal and you would go two miles a minute

We are strolling in the evening with the cat

holding hands and smiling

over Mel Brooks and his wonderful timing –

that silence that sets up a punch line

and the phone breaks in warning

there will be a missile siren any moment.

But like Adam and Eve we know there is hiding.

We cut through the park running

The siren blankets the grass with terror

I bite my lip at our jolting speed

not daring to turn to see the shrieking cat

and we make it to the door of a shelter

that is locked, but the siren has stopped

and now I can tend to the bleeding lip

standing under the overhang

until the All Clear releases us

and the sky is no longer our for

for the moment, and we can stride

home slowly while my heart

slows to normal

Guilt is the next step.

We go out looking for the cat

who’d walked the whole way with us

expecting a treat, and now is lost.