As It Happens

When they told me I was dying, which I wasn’t,

I began to miss the things in the world which I didn’t

even like about the world--the hideous traffic

on 95, for instance, which I found myself sitting in,

going nowhere on my way home, in no hurry now

that I was dying. I will miss this traffic, I thought,

feeling surrounded--girded--by people and life and

desire in the lanes. And the truck, the 18-wheeler

shouldering in, trying to pass on the right (I always

hated trucks), struck me now as a vessel of human

kindness, people helping people they don’t even know

by bringing them food from far away. I will miss

all the trucks, I thought, as I rolled down my window

and waved him in, and gave him the I-Love-You sign.

I will miss the waiting, the fuming, the inching

along, the reductive bumper stickers and caviling

crazy drivers with their chutzpah and their daring.

And the road itself, which is every road, everywhere,

bending, unfolding, continuing on. Then I turned

the radio on and the talking heads were talking

about death--all of the deaths at home and abroad.

And I thought to myself, the living are talking about

dying but the dying are talking about living. I am talking

about all the living I missed already, all the living

I wanted to do--any kind of living at all--now that I was

dying, which I wasn’t, as it happens, as it turned out.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. Website: paulhostovsky.com