Moments
Suzanne Morris
March 2, 2025
How fateful the silence
as the Black Hawk helicopter
drifts across my computer screen,
blundering into the flight path of
the large passenger jet
while on a nighttime training mission
above the Potomac River.
And in the next moment
sixty-seven people
lose their lives.
A few days later
the scene plays out
in a flight path
across my mind
during the last few minutes
before I
slide behind the wheel of my car
and head for Houston.
Nothing unusual,
I make this trip all the time:
south on Highway 69
to Lufkin
and from there, 59
south, straight on into
the teeming city
of my birth.
And yet....
What if I had not
remembered to
double check that the
front door is locked
or decided to stop by the bathroom
one more time...?
Just a matter of moments
either way
could save me from a
collision on the freeway
or, as fate would have it
set me on
course for one.
A native of Houston, Suzanne Morris has made her home in East Texas for nearly two decades. Her poems have appeared in anthologies as well as online poetry journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, The Pine Cone Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.