Sitting, talking, resting, trying to make the day happy. We heard the news, and all that fell away. The force behind the word working to quiet deepening, to fall heavily resounding. An automobile accident, and our friend, with a broken neck. (No, he’s not dead?) A lingering doubt to say the injury was unintended. Friends have real bodies, well-tuned nerves of feeling notes living, blood, flesh, bone, and all that, breakable. We all knew that bones could break, but it never was real before. And not to him, our friend. In the hospital, intensive care, critical. He has doctors and nurses to take care of him, and friends with nothing to do but hope, pray.
February 1971