Wrecker

 

       

Wrecker

 

And I – I made my own house be my gallows.

                                                          Dante

                                                          Inferno: XIII-142

 

Unless he closes his eyes to it, or draws

the shade as low as it can

possibly go, the turning light

 

of the wrecker, hues of yellowing

wounds, will claim all the territory

of his periphery.  Or maybe, because

 

the windshield, with its framed

cascade of cracks above the steering

wheel tells the wrecker

 

driver someone survived but barely,

(it’s his line, hundreds of times

in his lifetime, driving to accident

 

sites) and the other car, crushed under

the tires of all that was oncoming,

tells the story from the other side:

 

at least one body didn’t survive.  Three cut

seatbelts flap in the wind, frayed

ends like aged prayer flags.  That driver’s

 

side, the whole roof is in

the seat, or soon to be, briefly, and the lady

(he’ll know from the radio) was dead

 

on impact.  The ambulances are gone.

The reconstruction team is drinking

their third, maybe fourth coffee on scene.

 

All the mid-March slush has frozen

again.  The wrecked truck,

the wrecked car, the wrecked willow,

 

all of it flashes against the yellow

and the coming on

of sleet.  Waiting, he makes his way

 

down the road on foot, behind the truck,

its lift-kit bolts new and coming loose.

Who turned toward whom?  Who had

 

to, the unplowed roads, the frozen

rain?  Old-timer, it’s not the first

ride he had, he says to himself, looking

 

for the best hitch.  And aside from

wondering about the dead

and the near dead and the ones

 

who walk away, he can’t help praying

for the poor

bastard, single white male, they said

 

and speculate in code about

his sobriety, even at 8 am, speeding

down this ice and sleet like a bat

 

out of hell, and how years from now

in a house alone he’s bound to

wake up and wonder who she was,

 

the dead one, and feel his throat

a curved burn go cold.  Like there’s a rope

around it.  Steel rope.  Door-frame

 

rope.  Wrecker driver on his own

life-long penance rope.  He knows.  

He rubs the skin of memory.  He knows.