Scenes From the Highway

 

En route to our vacation,

we rubberneck past the carnage.

Lying crippled in a ditch, back

doors flung open, bloody

packages spilling out,

is a monstrous eighteen wheeler.

                                 

Before, I’ve only seen them

pushing eighty, five feet from our

van’s bumper, swerving loudly

around us. now, humbled, it smokes

and steams, cargo baking in the

Alabama sun.

 

Insubstantial beside the fallen

meat-hauler, three pick-ups gather,

their drivers questioning

the distraught trucker with overzealous

gestures.

 

Like nurses in greasy overalls,

some toss white-wrapped slabs

of meat from one man to another,

in an attempt to clean up the site

before high-noon.

 

We drive past, safe in our van,

to Florida, where overturned semi’s

don’t exist, only pretty people and beaches,

and the fleeting drama of jellyfish stings.