Lost in the Crowd - June 13 2024

 

Lost in the Crowd

June 13 2024

The faint rumble

of distant thunder

and my pace quickens,

heart jumps,

eyes scan the sky.

Because I am the sum

of all who came before.

The ancestral memory

and atavistic fear.

The superstitions that persist

despite all we’ve learned.

And the skittish disposition

of a small naked creature

in a predatory world.

Not to mention

a grim reckoning of risk.

Am I the solipsist

whom lightning must surely seek out?

Or am I exempt

and somehow protected from chance;

if not specially blessed

then lost in the crowd?

So far

I have slipped beneath the gaze

of the whimsical gods

who toy with us indifferently,

heedless to our pain.

Have evaded

Thor’s hammerthrow,

dodged

the thunderbolt of Zeus.

Have stood out when the rain

was coming down in torrents

and lightning cracked the sky

to survive another day.

But am starting to feel

my odds lengthen

complacency wane

reckoning come.

That from a hundred miles away

a bolt of rogue lightning

will arc across the sky

and strike.

On a clear day

out of the blue

utterly blind.

A random act of fate;

no way

I could see it coming.