Tuesday, June 20, 2006

and we move, again

two helicopters are what it takes to fly the victims from the wreckage and as they pan the skyline above us, everybody on the burm where i stand, everybody on this highway in rural pennsylvania, everybody turns. looks up from their games of catch, their sunbathing, their dogwalking, brows glistening on the frypan blacktop to offer condolences, silent or otherwise.
the man in front of our bus, one lense of his glasses wrapped with electrical tape, his son at his side mounted on a phonebook, seatbelt tight around him (country carseat) chuckles as i muse at the poor saps staged on the highway just badside of the accident, that empty plat of highway in sight, carnage at their feet, boxed in Until.

the path is cleared and the blood wiped clean and we move, again.

and i muse on my own accidents:

- falling from the tree in bellingham. it was summertime and the tree, it was rotten, root to dead old buds, and i climbed climbed and then fell (every branch on the way down) on my head, later to be positioned on the couch in the living room at a window that exposed that awful, conniving tree i'd fallen victim to.

- the beach on the oregon coast, where we rented a house for a week in june, when school let out. the "mish-mash" house. kool-aid smiles and Us3 "green onions". we ran on the beach, and eager for the flying, soaring just-beyond-my-reach frisbee, back-pedal, back-pedal, Turn into a mound of sand--indistinguishable from the rest--that stopped me, pulled me violently to the ground whereupon i fell on a stick (my sword...?)
my sight flashed yellow, then black. i spit sand, i saw sand, i bled from my eye. my eyelid, cut. if not for that initial impact of the bank of obtrusive sand, i would surely walk now with the insecurity of a barren equilibrium, and an eye patch.

- my first, of many, car wrecks. (i am Accident prone. I fear sometimes, for my cocky blunders and that they might cause my Untimely Departure.) there was a panic i developed young, in preschool, when my mother arrived so late there'd be a whole new batch of afternoon unknowns would arrive for playtime, naptime, lunchtime. a pain not to distant from pleasure, in my pelvis. a deep unsettling tickle that would cause me to push there on myself, knead like bread.
this was a panic i felt as i crawled out the passenger side window onto the roots of a tree, onto salal berries and how i looked down the steep bank, the cliff there, onto the beach and the cove and the quiet unperturbed lapping of the waves, the ringing in my ears, the engine still ticking. my brothers and i stood back from the car. (1979 subaru station wagon, maroon.) we saw the under wire, the twisted axles, the narrow V cut into the hood, the grill, by that simple, unmoved sapling.

- and now, hit by a car. fuck flatbush avenue. fuck whatever i've got that They attribute to youthful cockiness. "i'll live forever." fuck pretty corpses and burning out.
it would be a hot day. couldnt see The City from brooklyn for the smog at 9am. flatbush, a river thick with metal and gears and concrete and spinning rubber couldnt be more inviting. Take Me On, says the beast. With Relish, says i. the overhand brakes on my bike dont work, but are easy to reach. i've got no helmet on. i'm beating The River, i'm quick in the current. i see this jeep, facing the other way blinkerblinkerblinker, ready for that left turn. i've got a green and so does he. i take it. so does he, and he pumps the gas to pull him from the oncoming Rapids and i've got no recourse but to turn into him, broadside, bite the window, the wheel well and just spin. Spin. like you wind the camera too quick and it breaks, and i'm twisted up in the handlebars, my bag, the bike chain and my torn and achy little body.
i untangle. walk my bike to the curb. bystanders, and only one ventures to speak, are horrified. "that looked bad," she said. i hold up my arms, "am i bleeding?" she shakes her head.
my thigh twitches. trembles. i hope she doesnt see. put my hand there. my hand shakes. i get on the bike.
humbled by That River. tail between my legs. time to get a helmet, i think. there's only so much luck you get served up. and i doubt there's seconds.

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