ode to a twenty car pile up

Santa Yerba Buena Chronicles 1

ode to a twenty car pile up

Here we loose sight of little little things
We’ve made easy so easy we forget where we are
So she did, she and her friend
Coming down the Waldo grade
Driving too fast, unaware of the road
Late at night after a long night of night
It must seem strange to you all
In other other places that here
We have to show and tell the differences
Between hail and snow.
We see them almost never.
So even though
Everyone has to have SUVs
Just in case we all go skiing
This all means nothing
When you hit a patch of ice
At seventy miles an hour
Unexpected down hill
The cold wet treachery of a tunnel
You never really know what’s on the other side
There’s an element of trust as you speed onward
Toward an open window in the road ahead
So there was treachery, in a tricky bit of ice
Laid out like a welcome mat
Completely unexpected, as it is never there
And sure to disappear in the hard light of day
The last moments of a life played out
As a ridiculous cartoon
In slow second frames
The iron grip of irony
As a fractal of truth unfolds
These those final moments
When something’s finally wrong
You do what do what you can
We don’t feel the little tragedies anymore
Of the passing roadway below
Only our tires know sad truths
They take our weight carrying forward
We only see what’s coming
And then only half the time
In trust or hope or sorrow
An open window, speeding onward
Trust, sleep deep
And trust there is something on the other side