My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident
                (picnic
lightning) when I was three ... 
                                —Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Pedestrians are flattened by safes
falling from rooftops
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.