David Whalen (5/18/38 / Covington Kentucky)

A sound as of a baseball bat
striking a cardboard box

Then… sudden silence
Cold and dry

A white car receding into the distance
A numbness creeping into my leg and thigh

Flat on my back, akimbo in the median
Looking up, confused, at clouds and blue sky

Books that I carried just a moment ago
Now they're gone and I don't know why

Slow realization that I'd dodged
Yet…another bullet

As I raised on my elbows
With a grimace and a sigh

I looked down at my leg…
It was still there (and I smiled)

Though it was battered
and blackened…no lie

Death had missed me
by a matter of inches

Fate had decided
To give me a bye

My head lowered once again
And my eyes gazed at the heavens

And my lips
formed the question….Why?




Footnote: This poem is a true account of that happened to me on 5/12/12
I wrote a bit of this in my mind, as I lay stunned, in the median of a main street in Las Vegas after being hit while waiting on the median of a crosswalk by a hit and run driver on Mother‘s day. I never saw it coming, just heard the bang and felt the blow. No one helped me except one black lady who stopped her car next to me and asked me if there was anything she could do. I told her "thanks, but no, I think I'm good" I think she called 911, since I heard sirens behind me as I limped several blocks to my home. I had black marks (Tread marks?) from my knee down to across my shoe. and blood ran down into my sock. I drove myself to the E.R at U.M.C Where I found out I had a broken leg and a flattened foot. (incidentally, in case you're wondering, before I left the scene I found my books intact, scattered in the roadway) Thank goodness, they weren't hurt!