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.