Accidents

When Arlo was seven
he wanted to dunk a basketball
so he put a stool next to the basket

(must have been quite a stool)
and fell backwards
and broke his wrist.

Now a few years older,
he broke his arm (in two places)
on a skateboard.

On Wed. the 14th of March,
a man in Roma
died on a bicycle.

I did not know the man,
though I was with someone
who had been with someone

who saw it happen
I wonder about that man,
where was he riding to,

and did he know that,
riding a bike in Rome,
was living on borrowed time?

And brave Mark in the U.S.,
gets a motorcycle
and on the 24th of March,

has a bad fall and
came home a few days later
for a lot of healing.

Or my sister, and her then boyfriend,
hit on a motorcycle on the SF Bay Bridge,
and lived to tell about it.

Or Craig, inventor of the Vetter Fairing,
now in a wheel chair
because his passion was racing.

Or
or
or.

Isn't life dangerous enough
without the added risk
of the thrill of

flying through the
air unprotected
from the cruel pull

of gravity, who
keeps us earthbound,
even to the point

of giving us
fractures,
and (much) worse?