The brake lights farther up the road
advertised a turn, I thought,
as I grew angry at the bumpkin's
failure to switch on his blinker.
But as I approached, following
the yellow line like the groove
in a toy track, he remained
stopped, dead as an iceberg, dumb as a rock.
Just as I considered gunning and passing
on the left, I saw what led to his pause.
Across the plunge of the roadside ditch,
in a car, up side down, a woman dangled
from the window with a clearly broken neck,
her face turning the color of a light bruise.
It was as though she'd tried a head
stand while wearing her automobile.
Children in the backseat seemed to wait
for her instructions. A husband
on the passenger side blinked,
ready, perhaps, to tell her he was okay.
The house whose yard they'd crashed into
spilled out bodies in postures of emergency,
and, the car ahead of me continued on
like the end of a comment,
while I wailed in the temple of this toy world.
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