November Selection #3

Suggestion

We walk to the headlands
and onto the cliffs, looking down
at the cove far below.
A large wave washes in,
another bigger,
and then a huge one with a
ridiculous amount of spray,
roiling the cars on the beach.
As it recedes,
cars tumble, wind up
elsewhere on the beach.
It’s very dangerous.
I don't understand
why people go there to watch.

Walking through a corridor
in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
A young mother kisses her baby boy
and puts him in my lap.
She’s going off to meet her fate,
to die somehow,
maybe commit suicide, and I say,
“Isn't it possible
to have a different ending?”
I mean that the movie is predictable ­
we all know how it goes, and I’m offering her
the idea of changing it.
She shakes her head,
and I say to someone else,
“Well, maybe I’m planting the seed
for a different ending
one of these times.”
I’m challenging karma,
and it may take many iterations of the movie
for her to realize
she doesn't have to die
at this point.

--Ellen Skagerberg