'SCENE OF THE ACCIDENT'
& 'SONG IN A MINOR KEY'
by Howie Good



Scene Of The Accident

1
A nurse in white clogs hurried along the corridor. She had
to give the boy with the cuckoo clock heart a sedative.
His family stood around the bed like awkward strangers.
The doctor, a smoked-down cigarette between his fingers,
had excused himself. He had been trained to observe the
observable. The dusk was all old doors and blank windows,
a memorial to lost seamen.

2
The crowded elevator disappeared between floors.
Pedestrians stood weeping at the crosswalk. She still
loves you, said the old man walking a dog on a rope. I
smelled the salt of the nearby tears. It took two or three
matches before the light would stay lit.


Song In A Minor Key

Love bends like light around found objects,

a destitute white Ford, say,
with one red door and Florida plates,

while the shadows invite themselves,
the echo of the sun going down,

police marksmen in the windows.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 20 print and digital poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, Lovesick, published by Press Americana.