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Mama Mada
Witness
by Theo p hilus Kw ek
It was mid-morning. The body flipped,
came to rest face-down on tarmac.
Unaware, the rider went some distance
then, noticing something was amiss,
stopped, dismounted, ran back to where
a gathering clutch of men knelt and stood.
She was already gone. And so were we,
drawn on by the bus’s trajectory
toward our stops, unseeing, unseen
except in one last receding frame.
Steep death. The mind trips at the shock,
chafes at conversation, replays the scene
till the point at which all fall unplanned –
what then? Imagining gains no ground,
is caught in a morning’s too usual arc.
Hard pavement receives the pedestrian
in step as in flight, accounts to no-one
for what forces in our different lives
plot with foreign accuracy
lines of habit and desire, and bear us
away from accidents. Far behind now,
this leaving leaves its quiet mark. Men,
asked by children about their days,
find fewer answers, telling only truths,
and passing afterwards, see in the place
of yesterday’s routine a rupture
in our time, where past and present
futures meet, stop short. A living fault.
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