Considering a Cat Crossing Highway 435 at 4a.m. in Kansas City (or Death Does Not Always Have the Right-Of-Way)

He may have come upon dozens of road kills himself,
Without reflecting upon his nine lives,
Or dodged hundreds of Kansas license plates
To return safely to wherever his cat instinct dictated.
But what he was doing on this channel of highway
Locked in the cross hairs of my headlight beams
535 miles from Chicago at precisely that moment
My car reeled forward, while juxtaposing cruise control,
Refueling and road construction with energy, motion
And velocity – a colossal calibration
For a near miss – may have some universal
Significance for philosophy or differential calculus.
    Call it metaphysics or mathematics.
    By any other name, it was luck.


“Considering a Cat Crossing...” was originally published in Damaged Wine, 1994.