Pachebel In 60 Seconds Poem by Val Morehouse

Innocent it starts
a Sunday drive in the old van,
punctuated by the rippling measures of Pachebel’s Christmas Canon,
amid glimpses of hills fringed with pines lifting green into the sky.

Then the pleasure of rain beating time,
splashes silver as holiday ice crystals into every crevice, diamanté
melody sparkling on the windshield as the gutters flood with it,
and sheeting streets reflect the pale music of the sky.

Glittering the water flows in time, strumming sound
plucking fretted wheels like a violin, wet touches stroking the undercarriage
caressing waves spraying over the hood,
pooling deeply in the wake of your passage.

At last the tires lift and take flight on it like dark angels
setting a crescendo across the sky’s edge and you realize,
“We are going to die.”
Fear speeds you toward the last impact.

Scenes from memory harmonize a canon in your mind,
and in the final 60 seconds you hear yourself saying
not, “Oh God, why me? ” as meaning
spreads like a halo inside your head,

Not ‘I’m sorry’, not wishes for world peace,
not, “If only I could do it over, ” but simply
“I love you, Daddy. I love you, Mom. I love you, husband.
I love you, son. I love y…”