Tonight's Poet Corner: Witness To An Accident

Witness To An Accident
by Belinda Roddie

I am not waiting
for the traffic light to change.
There's a pile-up on the shoulder,
and the road's running wild red,
wild red, wild red, like an animal
wounded on a field of black and
white - it's like photography in
motion, but also stopped like a
premature heartbeat.

Let me keep driving -
so I don't have to see
the sagging body bags -
so I don't have to hear
the keening banshees clinging
to the roofs of police cars
as their stoic metal faces grin
sheepishly against the asphalt -
so I don't have to feel
the metaphorical boa constrictor
wrap around my chest and attempt
to suffocate me with my own primal
emotions and latent fear of death.

No, officer, I don't know why
you pulled me over. I was in
the middle of an anxiety attack
in which I was questioning my own
miserable mortality while some schmuck
was crammed into a sack even though
the blood was still wet in his eye sockets,
and all he could see as he died was
wild red, wild red, wild red, like
an animal wounded on a field that's
slowly devouring all the color on
the freeway. Did you call his wife?
She may want to hear your voice.