For Lack of a Keyhole

For Lack of a Keyhole

Surely, to be suffocated any place on Earth, in water,
or in one's own bed, lungs failing, would be catastrophic.
Medical science will tell you that no matter how you die,
lack of oxygen will always be the cause.

Heart attack. Aneurysm. Stroke. Alzheimer's. Car crash.
Crushed with a wall of concrete. All of it. Lack of oxygen.
Oxygen, of which normal air is only 21%. - Atmosphere
the equivalent of a swipe of varnish on a basketball.

Thanksgiving dinner. Too much turkey in the windpipe
when Uncle Louis tells the best joke you've ever heard.
Now he's doing your eulogy. I think of the astronaut.
Recently severed from the mother ship, and floating.

Here is someone wishing a shark would end it sooner.
He looks at his supply data. Four minutes to eternity.
The world receding at a clip. In those moments he recalls
a professor going on about Luther and his 95 Theses.

The Wittenberg door. How vitally important that was.
Right about now, the Wittenberg keyhole would be nice.
One nostril at a time. In that keyhole. Two minutes now.
He thinks of his wife. His two sons. The Earth is so blue.

… and then no one thinks for him. Only of him.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --