Sirens in the Desert

                        “Ask not for whom the bell tolls…”

                                                —John Donne

The ambulance calls once or twice each week.

It’s only natural that people at the pool

of the retirement community should ask

for whom the sirens sound.

It’s only inevitable that somebody

makes a joke about Hemingway or Donay,

and for someone else to correct the name

to Donne, which leads to another round

of lame jokes about being done, well done,

or whatever. Still the sirens sound

and people want to know who has fallen,

who won’t be getting up tomorrow.

And when they hear about a drowned grandson

or a lightning strike, they know sirens call us all.

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First appeared in Di-Verse-City 2011: Austin International Poetry Festival Anthology. Edited by Barbara Youngblood Carr. April 7, 2011.