Choking on a Cherry

While you were choking on a cherry,
In the middle of a dappled country road,
I was twelve, and terrified
And stood at a distance, like
A block of stone, watching
The woman we were visiting
Pound your bent back with urgency.

(Grandmother told me how one summer
You almost choked on a teaspoonful
Of honey trickling slowly down your
Baby throat, and all she could do was
Watch)

When the cherry was propelled out
And you breathed back into life,
I too was catapulted from the
Dark nether regions of possible
Childhood tragedies into a fairly
Standard untraumatized adolescence,
Ushered in by a breath of relief –

Relief which, in retrospect, was only
Stalling for time, and blew up into
Smithereens, dispersed forever
When, twenty years later, I received
The news of your death, final
And irreversible, holding no
Hidden last-minute reprieves.