It’s Not Morbid to Hug Our Ghosts in Passing

Do they not haunt you,
All death’s local eruptions?
I’m not asking you to feel

Guilty or depressed.
I’m asking if you’re haunted
By abrupt outbreaks of death,

How what’s inevitable
Can also be stochastic,
Not always the plague,
War, cancer, dementia, age,

But the explosion
In the fertilizer plant
That kills nearby schoolchildren,
Air ruptured with bursts of glass.