How Good Fortune Surprises Us
I was hauling freight
out of the Carolinas
up to the Cumberland Plateau
when, in Tennessee, I saw
from the freeway, at 2 am
a house ablaze.
Water from the firehoses arced
into luminescent rainbows.
The only sound, the dull roar of my truck
passing. I found myself strangely happy.
It was misfortune on that cold night
falling on someone’s house,
but not mine
not mine.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright © 2007 by Jackson Wheeler, whose most recent book of poetry is A Near Country, Solo Press, 1999. Reprinted from Rivendell, Issue Four, Native Genius, Spring 2007 by permission of the author.