I Heard About Your Accident

Remember
when the dump truck fell
into a sinkhole one Friday morning
beside the Dunkin’ Donuts?
The TV crew showed up
before the wheels had even stopped
spinning,
unpacked a pair of vans,
planted a sparse garden of cameras,
and it was their uncoiled cables,
various lengths, that formed the perimeter,
when the police tape loosed
and went fluttering
and we pushed and craned
to look into the void.
 
And the night Seamus Heaney
came to read in Harvard Square,
the heat broke
into fat drops, finally, and fell
hard in the streets.  My hands,
clutching wet handle bars.
My bike, chasing yours
the wrong way down Comm Ave.
Pedaling harder than I ever have
for the occasional look
you threw my way.
 
I heard about your accident.
I didn’t write,
because you didn’t tell me.
We had a hole in us where some
thing should have been.
But, that last time
up the ladder to your Pearl St.
rooftop, caught together
in the sudden, spinning dark,
and the wind that blew me apart?
How I admired you then,
that hungry, hungry heart. Even
the way you loved me,
with that love held loosely,
I admired.  And finally,
when you chose your freedom
over me, your lack of agony.
(I admired that, too)