How Close Is A Close Call?

I remember when Poetry In Motion started to appear on the subways. it was a big deal for me to be able to look up and see a poem that drew me in. I'd take out a diary and start copying them down (happened several times).

I was just in a used bookstore and bought a collection of Poetry In Motion (for 5 bucks). I remember copying down these lines one day while on the train. I'd like to know these by heart:

In masks outrageous and austere

The years go by in single file;

But none has merited my fear,

And none has quite escaped my smile.

~
- Elinor Wylie

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Debra Winger has a way of staring down an old phrase and making it sound new. Toward the end of her book, which I'm reading very slowly because I don't want it to be done, she talks about the cliche's words "a close call.

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"How close is a close call if we do not let it change our lives?"

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Winger recalls almost losing her life on a boat in India and imagining each of her dear family members living on without her. At some point she asks the above cited question. She goes on to say, "I do believe that they are there to do just that: change us in a way that allows us to connect the things that have wanted to come back together because they belong together."

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Many obvious ideas come to my mind. Here's a more obscure link. Rav Hirsch stops on the words, "G-d is close to all who call Him, to all those who call Him in truth." He comments that the ambiguity of the repetition here can be explained in the following manner. G-d is indeed close to all, but you'll only feel that closeness if you call to Him in truth.