Balanced,

precariously,

on my red hand-cart,

two buckets full of water

for the dry bird baths,

wobbled a bit.

So I stopped on the dirt path

to the bird feeding ground

to secure them.

I feed the birds

twice a week.

Nothing could be more ordinary.

Until that limb

from that old oak tree

growing by the side of the path

surrendered its rot-fight

and lost hold of its Mother,

though she’d held so tight

for so long.

About ten feet long,

five inches thick.

Less than a widow maker,

more than a stick.

Down it came.

Caught my left shoulder

in a side-ways slice

and glanced off my head

just by my ear.

Blood thinners keep me

from having a stroke

but make any cut

a bloody, oozing poke.

I sat on a picnic bench.

as two kind ladies,

fitness walkers in the park,

ministered to me

while we waited for the EMT’s.

I’m thinking, through a foggy blur,

“Well! Hell!

Better a horizontal drop,

parallel

to the ground

than some whistling bomb,

stuck,

perpendicular

in my head.

I could be dead!”

It isn’t hard to be

in the wrong spot

at the wrong time.

Just follow your plans

and walk that road

until you come,

zip-pa-dee-do-da-ing

to that dot

at the intersection of

living and not.

Perhaps a lightning bolt

or a heart attack.

Or a walk

in the park

on some summer evening lark.