What We Can While We Can in Life
By Don Iannone

Sometimes the weight of life
is so heavy
you can't help but stumble
and even sometimes
you fall.

Sometimes the speed of life
is so fast
you can't help falling behind
and sometimes
you never finish the race
seeming like yours to win all along.

Sometimes the twists and turns in life
set you spinning in circles
whose circumferences fail to intersect
even the tiniest part of your true nature.

Sometimes life goes on
without you
in directions you never imagined.
In directions not yours.
In directions, even at your best
you cannot go.

Sometimes the only thing
we have left
is the lingering glow
of life's fire
burning on for those left after.

Second Take on the Interstate Accident
By Don Iannone

One poem was not enough
to shake loose the hold
of the interstate accident
I witnessed last month.

The images of the dead bodies
seem to hover in my mind.
I saw them--
the dead bodies,
completely covered by sheets.

People alive in one instant
and dead in the next.
People on their way to somewhere
when something went terribly wrong
and now their lives have suddenly ended.

Two people
who won’t go home tonight
to their families,
eat supper,
and complain about their jobs.

Two people
who never intended to die this way,
or for that matter in any way
on this snowy cold early February morning.

I wonder who was at fault--
if anyone at all was to blame
for what had happened.
What good is blame
at a time like this any way?

The two people on the covered stretchers
are just bodies now, waiting
to be loaded into the ambulances
with the flashing red and blue lights, and
then taken through the snowy darkness
to a nearby small town hospital,
where those who love them
must come at this early hour,
identify their bodies, and
somehow accept
they will never see their loved one again.

The bodies have names--
even now at this dark hour,
as their spirits slip away,
and their loved ones hover over them,
saying their names, hoping
the names will bring them back to life.

Why was I driving so fast this morning?
Why was I not paying attention to the traffic,
the slippery road, and
my hurried, over-stressed, out-of-control life?
I could have caused this accident
by leading my life in such a reckless fashion.

I could be one of those lifeless bodies,
covered by a stark white sheet, waiting
to be taken to a hospital I don’t know,
and my family would have to come
and identify my remains.

Why do I drive myself so hard in life?”

We Walk This Road But Once
By Don Iannone

We come this way but once.
There is no stopping us
once we're here--until
the road we travel ends, and then
a piece of us continues--
on another road
that we can't know--until
the road we're on has ended.
We come this way but once.
It is always the first time--
on whatever road we travel.
It is always the first time--
on whatever road we walk.
Next time we walk a road,
may we be gently reminded
we've walked other roads before.
But on this road,
we shall walk but once.

Dedicated to Joanne
By Don Iannone

We write our lines.
Even the bitterest, saddest and most painful--
to the very end.
I think there comes a time--finally,
when we want someone
to simply take away the pen,
and stop the writing.
I think there comes a time--finally,
when the words become
too hard to write, and
what we write is too much to bear.
The writing stops--eventually
for all of us.
Even those of us writing
perfectly beautiful lives.

Otherwise
By Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Impermanent Being
By Don Iannone

Comes a time
when we must go.
Before that time
we don't exactly know.
Seems unfair
a secret to the very end.
But how much notice
we cannot amend.
No matter how much time
we have to be...
It's never enough for you or me.

Standing Strong During the Perilous Storm
By Don Iannone

Dreams once again awaken me...
to the truth I must follow.
This time it is an old building toppled
by high winds and ominous dark storm clouds.
The old building is not just any building...
it is the iconic Cleveland Terminal Tower;
built in 1930 and standing 708 feet high.
My observation point is high above,
from the very top of a newer building,
which miraculously withstands the perilous storm.
The old Terminal Tower sways back and forth,
and eventually breaks in half,
causing its top half to crumble and fall to the ground,
exposing the building's frail interiority,
and causing panic by those in the building.
I am stunned, but instantly called
to rescue those trapped
in the fallen building.
I extend myself through
a mysterious arm of the newer building,
to help those trapped
to climb from the fallen Terminal Tower
to the stronger and newer building.
Once all are safe,
I awaken,
remembering the dream,
and feeling something powerful
has taken place inside me.
Something has changed...
perhaps died, and certainly fallen
and arisen anew within me.
The deep heartfelt question
I've carried around for several long months
has been answered:
my new calling is about being
the bridge that I am, and
helping others move
from the old and fallen
to the new and ascending.
Gratitude fills me,
as I ponder this amazing dream,
and ready for the next leg of my journey.

Twenty-One Years Later Still Holding On
By Don Iannone

Mom died twenty-one years ago today
in a cancer-stained single bed
in the Reverand Oral Roberts' City of Faith Medical Center
in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
How fitting we should die in single beds--
yet another reminder, the journey home
is ours to take alone.
Mom never intended to die at fifty-eight,
but I doubt she would be ready to go at any age.
Death was Mom's constant fear,
and her fear was the death of her.
I know, because she birthed her fear into me,
her first child, born on a cold snowy January 19, 1951.
I often think back upon the last time I saw Mom alive
in that single ghost-white-sheeted bed.
I knew she would die soon,
but she still clutched a single thread of hope
that her God would spare her saying good-bye
to all she loved and all she dreaded in her life.
Her voice was hollow and empty
when I kissed her good-bye for the last time.
She was ready for her pain to be over,
but like all of us, she clutched life in any form
rather than surrendering her pain,
no matter how unbearable.
Five days later,
they called me out of a business meeting
in downtown Cleveland,
to tell me that Mom had finally lost the fight.
A large part of my life flashed before me
as I tried to imagine life without the woman
who brought me into this world.
At her funeral, my sister Diana,
my brother Doug, and I encircled each other
and cried the heaviest tears
our lives had ever known.
The tears have finally dried,
but twenty-one years later,
there is still a piece of me
that holds onto a piece of her,
and in a strange sort of way,
I feel she holds onto a piece of me.

Friday Night at the ER
By Don Iannone

The hospital emergency room is filled
with long sick faces most nights.
It's Friday night, and
things are much worse than normal,
as a steady stream of e-squad vehicles
pull up and drop off sick and injured people.
You wonder how some people are still alive
after such horrible things happen to them.
A young girl is brought in
with the top of a pop bottle embedded
in her blood-drenched right eye.
Down the long corridor,
desperate unanswered cries echo
long after two men's bodies are hauled off
on cold black gurneys,
draped with stiff white sheets.
I listen in as a trembling elderly woman
with matted white hair
begs the trauma nurse to promise
someone will feed her cats,
who sit faithfully on the front window sill
until they are noticed and let into the house.
As I ready to leave,
a medical team rushes past me.
It's a major trauma patient...
a gunshot wound in the abdomen.
It's bad.
I partially turn away as the team wheels
a lifeless ashen-faced young Black boy
through the side entrance door.
His bright red blood is puddled
atop the piled sheets covering his thin frame.
As I walk limply to the car,
the cold January night air grabs me like death.