Accident

An antsy Audi
high-beams me
as if my crawling
three feet closer
to the Ford pickup’s tail
will get us through
this bad trip faster.
We’re all trip-trapped
on a two-lane road.
The only motion
from jumping-jack wipers
and cascading rain:
overdose of rhythm
without meter.

All of us late, running
out of gas, we begin to see
flashing psychedelics:
red, blue, yellow, pink,
orange cones and vests,
police waving us through
stop lights, stopping us
through green.
We don’t know yet
we are the requiem
for a woman my age
whose wet left turn
crescendo slid her
underneath a twisting
tractor-trailer cab.

At the intersection,
we feel the same
horror at her random demise,
relief for the minutes
that took her and spared us.
We hope we
are alive for a reason.

Published in Hermes Poetry Journal