A Near-Death Experience

 

As I rode down through old York town

I saw a maid with ravishing raven hair

All dressed in Spanish.

I felt the pistol at my hip,

Still warm from the other guy.

But then a vagrant putto dodged out from some blind alley

Between two graffitied buildings

And took dead aim.

I awoke days later at Toronto Western.

The doctors told me I’d been lucky

The arrow was deflected by the poem in my pocket

Next to my heart.

-- Stephen Kent Roney