Analysis of Feeding the Whale

I find the newspaper with the story about me,
then returning home, an ambulance in the street ahead -

lights flashing, slowing traffic, doors gaped wide -
like a whale waiting to swallow the man on the gurney.

A Jeep aslant on the sidewalk, all doors ajar –
as if it had just vomited its contents.

Two young women in the car behind me,
busy with phones, pay no attention to

the whale preparing to swallow the man on the gurney –
lost in their story in my rear-view mirror.

Me, the lost women, the man on the gurney -
all grains of sand in our own hourglass –

waiting to feed the whale.