Shoveling Snow
Is your heart healthy enough for sex?
This moment for me the world is divided
into adults whose hearts are
and adults whose hearts aren’t,
a divide that stands like a font of holy water
to my right, as I enter a big dark church
for 10 O’Clock mass. Towards the end
of the mass I hear about a man who died
from a heart attack after shoveling snow.
This is not the first time I’ve heard of a man
dying like that. Though I’ve never heard
of a woman dying after shoveling snow,
I suspect women have. You might say
snow caused the death of John Doyle,
the name of the man mentioned this morning.
Maybe if it hadn’t snowed he’d be here.
Maybe he’d have dipped his fingers
in holy water, made the sign of the cross,
and felt a drop of water on his brow
as I did, coming into this church.
Maybe snow had little to do with his death.
The heart attack might have happened
while he was signing a check, a thing
not at all physically strenuous. Somebody
has a fatal heart attack during sex;
that too happens. If it hadn’t snowed,
John wouldn’t have picked up the shovel;
that makes sense. But some things make
no sense. It’s a big, wide world out there.
In this big dark church I wonder, can water
be divided into holy and unholy; surely
bad water coexists with the good.
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Stink Eye Magazine 