Lines Written On Seeing Death While Resting in Park Grass

Todd McClintock

The darkness that collected in your eyelids for an instant
couldn’t have been an airplane passing between you and the sun;
you would have felt the fear you feel when you hear a motor in the sky
with your eyes closed,
(propellers gripping violently at the patterns of the atmosphere
leaving ribbons of shredded wind and pockets of airlessness
in the vapor trail
with the invariable illusion of getting louder
and closer
until you think your eardrums buckle
and you worry that the spinning blades
might be at conversation distance
and you mark the moments
when you stop taking for granted
your penis,
and then your nose,
then your face
[but if you’re being honest with yourself,
your nose will be the first to go] –
you don’t open your eyes
to check if it’s actually happening;
you’d be a crazy person if you did
[but you wince in case you’re not])
so the sky is still, presumably, blue and unmanned.

It couldn’t have been a person walking close enough to graze you
with the sharp and jagged shadow of unconditioned, wind-blown hair;
you would have felt the fear you feel when you hear footfalls near your head
and your backpack isn’t nuzzled under your arm
where your spouse would be if you lived in a mattress commercial,
(some audibly greasy fingers
taking up the book next to your hands
and turning it to see the barcode
and how much they could fetch for it on the internet
[and how much more they could fetch for it
in Canada]
or a far-sighted jogger
whose attention hangs lazily on
the arms of a half-dead London plane tree
[and how the leaves on the living branches
keep the sun off the dead ones
in a feat of fraternal arrogance]
and whose shoe might land squarely
on a weak wall of your skull
while she’s distracted –
you don’t curl up in a ball
to keep your blood in;
you should trust a person’s ability
to put contacts in responsibly)
so all the dents in your precious grass bed
are shaped like parts of you, for now.

It must have been a fluke;
you missed a quick eclipse
that science couldn’t predict
or
a lazy synapse failed to fire
and your brain forgot what light was.
Your rest-collected sweat
and a wall of coughing wind
are cooling off your cheeks
and to warm them up
you peel apart your eyelids
and get the blood moving in your face
through a sequence of silent blinks.