Six Degrees

One of them falls off her porch into the woods,
the other one off her skis. Not a good day
for actresses, says my husband. And I stay
up too late surfing, remembering the time

I cracked my head on the doll cradle. The child
was four, her eyes round with the sound.
We'd been laughing ourselves silly over
some small thing, when Mommy fell back

in surrender. Skull meets immovable object,
cradle, say, or frozen ground, a real show-stopper,
just like that. So in lieu of Free Cell I obsess
on the other, the one who went skiing, but

what am I looking for? Like the time I dreamt
about Bette Davis, then woke to her death
in the morning paper. There we were, some
improbable crossroads, improbably crossing.

And maybe it's as simple as (just like) that.
The anonymity of it, the fragility. If not you,
if not this time, then someone else. Eventually
it will be, there for us all, our fifteen minutes.