A Grey Squirrel

A Gray Squirrel

Just 50 feet in front of me a grey squirrel

paces himself on the middle line of the

Old 421 Highway where I drive home

every other day under a canopy of

brittled trees, mostly oaks and a few pines.

I wonder, What If?

What are the odds one of these

trees would fall and kill me?

Unless luck lay on my gas and brake pedals,

I might not be able to stop my demise and

what parts do luck and fate play anyway?

Theoretically, my thoughts and the auto pilot 

mesh together with the road and instant death,

but who wants to think about vacant theories

when real, tangible mutilation lay strewn

across this stretch of road, under watchful trees.

 I swerve to the left. 

By Patricia Cole