"Sirens in the Distance"

 

            Before this morning’s freezing daybreak, emergency sirens sounded in the distance. Sympathy seeped into my waking thoughts. With all of the construction surrounding our home, that wail signals an accident on the highway. Someone’s day sucks before sunrise. The single scream lasts only seconds as a second and third join in with discordant harmony.

            My imagination transports me to the scene where crumpled cars with unpaid balances block the road. The incessant red and white of flashing ambulance lights dance in the soft morning light. Police honoring their code to protect and serve hover nearby. Fire trucks stand alert. The injured drivers and passengers, attached to monitors, get loaded and zip away.

           

            What tragedy awaits these people? Vehicles demolished beyond repair. One trip to an emergency room, even with insurance, costs too much. An accident caused by one second of inattention in a high construction area, and every person impacted faces financial disaster. I don’t allow myself to envision death within the destruction.

 

            I don’t attend to the returning siren songs as my morning routine pushed away their lament. Only now, with my mug of hot tea and keyboard before me, do I wonder and worry about the sorrows of these strangers.

Daylight and still dangerous!

 

Copyright 2025 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Dusk with Daybreak"

Dusk with daybreak—the shadowed haze   

sits cold upon my shoulders   

hiding Future in gray unknowns.   

Tethered to old illusions,   

I hunker low to the Mother   

longing to return to her   

as mist gentles me to slumber,   

numbs my fears, halts my labored   

breath with winter’s monotony.   

Knees pulled tight, a fetal ball   

of too many expectations,   

I flee in desperation   

back to her welcoming graces.   

My unsteady hand gathers   

kindle, possibilities fueled   

by spring’s retreat, fall’s demise.   

A flame feeds upon offerings   

of leaf and twig, stick and log   

until the blaze scorches my cheeks,   

warms my tremulous fingers,   

and banishes the icy gloom.    

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Fire and Rain”

Watching the news over the last couple of days, the lyrics to James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” become a haunting serenade. While the eastern seaboard drowns under deluges from several hurricanes and tropical storms, portions of the south burn in nearly uncontrollable fires. In Texas, we joke about rain dances while we enviously watch weather systems skip around us. Of course, I’m certain my friends in Georgia, Vermont, or New York would love to send some of their downpours this way.

This isn’t just a case of the grass being greener, though. Unfortunately, some politicians heartlessly take advantage of these disastrous conditions to promote their own agendas. Somehow, these people feel it’s necessary to twist their religious fanaticism with their personal ambitions into a knotted rope of discrimination and prejudice.

At this point in time, I hope they’ve created enough rope to hang themselves.

Humankind has not woven the web of life.

We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together.

All things connect.

Chief Seattle, 1854

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman