Odds are that something else will kill you,

something that hasn't already been worried

to death, the not in a million years event.

You'll get caught in a shower of meteors. Planes

and pianos fall from the sky often enough.

I heard the screech, the metallic crumple. The sun

rose anyway, in a shattered goblet, a bubble this red

convertible could easily swallow.

The roadside altar pantomimes a warning. Daffodils

with torn throats loll beneath a twine- tied cross,

pictures and messages already dissolving with weather.

Tonight's eclipse obscures the tongue-drag of yellow

paint over smeared asphalt; the snake full of moon

wakes before dawn.

All night long, it scallops the edge of the world.

In the morning, I proceed with caution.

Cheryl Snell (MD)  was a 2003 Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two chapbooks, most recently Epithalamion (Little Poem Press, 2004).