Chronicles of Death not Foretold

On a mission
to buy hot chocolate
for the tuck shop,
I look left
instead of right,
and only see the car,
when it stops beside me.

I shudder for the children
waiting unaware,
while the sirens mourn
a street or two away.


14-29 September 2008


This incident occurred a few weeks ago, when I was volunteering at the Newham Academy of Music Tuck Shop, where I spend most of my Saturday mornings in term-time. (See "OCD in the Tuck Shop" 29 June 2007!) I wasn't really concentrating, and very nearly got run over when crossng at a slightly odd junction, where a small one-way street joins the main road. I basically forgot about the possibility of any traffic coming from the one-way street. What affected me most later, was the thought that, had I been killed (or even just seriously injured!) no-one at the tuck shop would have known what had happened to me, and would have been waiting (perhaps slightly impatiently) for my return, and woudln't have connected the distant sound of sirens with my absence... I am still not sure if I need the last line, or if I've made the right choice of verb for the sirens (I had 7, as I said in the previous posting! They were (in no particular order): weep, mourn, sob, wail, howl. scream and shriek...) The title's also probably a bit "over clever"...