Wasn’t Their Concern

Call her Ingrid, say she died pursuing things
she made a mission of; personal freedoms,
unfettered choices, perhaps she too followed
the voices. She died on a busy suburban
street in rush-hour traffic, her fragile body
thrown by impact in an undignified sprawl,
dressed in hand-me-downs clutching a small
cloth bag she lay a barely breathing speck
in the centre of a scene of chaotic panic.

Ingrid never knew who had killed her, even
he never saw her face before until he
crouched over her protectively, begging her
to breathe in anguished fear and disbelief.
The ambulance and traffic police brought calm
to disorder, if not relief, sending the on-lookers
scurrying back to the shops or their homes. The
traffic merely manoeuvred past dispassionately,
after all, it wasn’t their concern.

Two Sisters of Mercy came to the door to help
him grieve. They said Ingrid died as she had lived,
a poor but free spirit who bore no ill-will in her
uncluttered life. A kindly soul, never a mother or
wife, came and went as she pleased. The tears
he shed were real, remorseful, compassionate,
he always carries her still image in his mind, the
impossibly small woman he begged to breathe
on an anonymous street where she died.
© I.D. Carswell 2006