Poem: What It Means To Be Lucky

What it means to be lucky

when it counts
it's not the blowing on the dice

or scratching away the silvery grey flakes
that gather in the dirty cuticles
of a hopeful hand gripping a lotto ticket
it's not a raffle ticket carefully scrawled with legible letters,
drawn from the billowing bleary red of others just like it

it's not matching the black digits air-popped up on innocuous white balls
read aloud by some tall blonde in a sequin gown with a glittery voice
it's not finding a penny, Lincoln side up
or hitting that Grand Slam in the bottom of the ninth

or casting the right response in glowy blue
to a question posed over an 8-Ball

 
when it counts
its the seconds after tragedy
small minutes that creep like weeks
trudging through the not knowing, the hoping,

the gut-twisting fear,
it counts
in the moments after your ears ring with names and places:
Columbine, Virginia Tech, a mall in Canada, another in Oregon, a packed theatre in Aurora,
a defended military installation Ft Hood, a peaceful Sikh temple,

an elementary school in Newtown,
in your own hometown
it counts
in the moments held back by flimsy yellow barricades
stark black lettering: Police Line Do Not Cross
Crime Scene Do Not Cross
rattling hope even as it flutters in an arctic wind

you're too numb to feel rake against your cheeks
it counts in the moment they run
sprinting down and out and away from the black unknown
eyes locked and legs carrying them
out of the darkness, across the yellow,

to you

and it counts
when you hold your loved one,
wrap your arms around your baby boy, your little girl
around your lover, your sibling, your parents
and feel their heart beating against yours
it's in the moment, you see their face

cracked open by a strained smile or blurry
obscured through an outpouring of tears
yours. theirs.
it is in the quivering of shoulders
and heaving of your chests
as sobs come like breath and
words are lost and buried

in the crooks of your necks

when it counts
it is in the meaning of grateful, and sorrow
and knowing that they can still be felt
that you are alive, that they are alive
to still feel
and sometimes, it is even in the guilt

for thinking more could be done,
for wanting to do it,
for being lucky in still drawing breath
when others lay still

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.