Luck

Luck

The bullet grazed his grizzled chin entering his throat and lodging in his thyroid.

How ironic to die in Bedford-Stuyvesant grocery store after surviving Stalin’s army and the devastation that was his life up to now.

Working furiously to remove the bullet without grazing the larynx not wanting to muffle the screams and shouts that had resounded through his hollowed existence up to now.

Digging within to find a way out.

Digging in to find a way in.

Luck had everything to do with it.

Without luck the best of talents are swallowed up like a suppository entering a sphincter.

The luck of the Irish and their famished drunken tirades of the glorious past embittered by occupation and denial.

The luck of Gandhi whose enemy did not shine to mass murder.

The luck of the defeated laid low by a burst of bravery, but

left stranded on fields of sudden pain and followed by tranquility.

You could live if they let you, a Yiddish bromide smirks.

But there are only a few who have such luck.