Au Premier Coup D'Oeil Poem by Gregory Wm. Gunn

It's rather inexplicable
to my better judgement
why all my accommodations,
all at once
are making a mass exodus,
squeezing through the cracks
in the window frame,
everything sucked
like a thick milkshake
through a drinking straw.


Why do I feel like
a spectator who can't turn away
from a crash scene,
unaffected by the victims'
parlous straits?
how at the moment of seeing it,
it fails to unsettle me
and then, weeks afterward
trembling, I recall the tragedy
in a sort of slow motion memory,
considering how I might
have plugged up those cracks,
or quite possibly,
prevented them
from ever occurring
in the first place.




May 31,2008
GWG