“It really is a wonderful life…”

 

Old Man Gower

stalks across the plank board floor

in the back room

where the medicaments are kept.

In the moment that he raises

his arm and it swings

toward me I have a vision.

I see everything that could

happen, the loves

and battles lost, the poisoned family.

But it’s so brief, I

think it is only pain, shooting off

sparks. And when the blow

lands my head rings like a bugle

and I know this: for every clang

a pair of wings. But, this I did not

know: that I would come close

to suicide, nor that my wife would

rally my friends, nor,

God knows, that I would need

intervention, angelic intervention.