“Never Send…”

Having left work early this spring
afternoon, I feel no rush
to be anywhere but here and now,
even waiting at this reluctant light,

where I can watch the warm day pass
casually, like steady traffic,
unhurried by demands of other times
or places—when from the left,

cresting the brow of the hill,
an ambulance appears, flashing
not only its lights but its red self,
proceeding fast but cautiously

through the intersection,
its red seeming so intense and loud
against the crisp blue of sky and
dull browns and ochres of walls.

It passes beneath the electronic
billboard, where each ad lasts but
thirty seconds, and now we see
“The Alliance of Furriers” who

represent their arts with the image
of a woman in lingerie, cloaking
herself in an ankle-length white coat
of mink or fox. No matter,

the ambulance and cargo proceed,
giving me the impulse to pray
to a God increasingly obscure
(God never prays, you know,

perhaps does not know how),
but my prayer is an attempt to see
in mind’s eye the interior in pastel
green or blue, where EMTs rush

to attach tubes and wires to the proper
spots of flesh. Why, I wonder, and who