Accident Report - Feb 1 2025

 

Accident Report

Feb 1 2025

It wasn’t an accident.

Not that it was intended.

There was no plan, after all

to intersect in time and space.

For the phone to distract me.

For the vandalized sign

I squinted to make out.

The collision happened

on a clear day

without much traffic

after the snow had been cleared.

Driver error, they say.

But like all bad luck

coincidence

what some would call fate

it’s never one thing.

It’s slices of Swiss cheese

lining up so precisely

that the holes overlap.

Or just a single hole.

Long odds,

but we count on that

to keep us safe.

I barely felt it.

The steel absorbed the impact,

crumpling, deforming

accordioning in,

while the suspension softened the blow;

the big car, that wallows anyway

dipping and swaying

on its plush coil springs

sway bars

and brawny shocks.

The sound seemed to come from somewhere else.

I felt detached,

as if watching from above

time had stopped

this wasn’t my reality.

So I sat

still in my seat and gripping the wheel,

staring blankly

straight ahead.

Until the new normal occurred to me

and you know the rest,

going through the motions

like some 3rd person character

I was watching perform.

Collision sounds loud, violent, destructive.

No turning back the clock.

While accident

is toast

dropped butter-side down,

a misplaced phone,

a butt-dialled call.

You smile, and excuse yourself.

I'm not sure which this was.

We collided hard

but who could see it coming?

Could be responsible,

have altered

the chain of events?

Could anticipate

my momentary lapse,

the black ice and bad tires,

the damaged sign.

That every cut corner

and unexpected delay,

every little thing we did

or didn’t

since getting out of bed that morning

had led to this.

Perhaps the day before.

Which — forget the semantics — is just life as it’s lived;

the countless contingencies

and bad decisions

that rule our fate.

Traffic safety guys prefer collision over accident: while the former describes the moment in time, the latter presumes a cause. Or rather, no cause. When there always is one; or, more accurately, are many: road design, signage, mechanical failure, driver error, bad weather.

Collision is like owning up to your responsibility. Accident is more like shrugging your shoulders. You can learn from a collision. While isn’t an accident just an act of God?

I once experienced something like this. I was probably in my late teens (so back when the mountains were cooling!), driving my father's gigantic (and indeed wallowy!) Grand Marquis (just the name tells you all you need to know), turning left at a significant intersection. So this is what informs my description of the actual moment: that big car cushioned the impact so well I barely felt it! Who needs air bags when you have one of those big old American cars: lots of cosmetic sheet metal and dampening mass.

The poem, of course, isn’t about semantics. (It just started there. The rest was riffing and letting the poem find its way.) It’s about contingency; the delusion of destiny; and the conceit of personal agency. Because shit happens, it’s complicated, and one can control only so much.

Ruled By Fear - Jan 31 2025

 

Ruled By Fear

Jan 31 2025



Standing at the top

braced against the frame

I would peer down through the open door,

eyeing warily

a set of steep narrow stairs

disappearing into the gloom.

They creaked, no matter how softly I stepped,

as if announcing the presence

of an uninvited guest

an unwelcome intruder.

The air changed abruptly

as I descended,

breaking the plane

between the warm air mass above

and the cool damp

sitting heavily below.

Between the kitchen’s savoury scent

and the subterranean must

of mildew and mouse droppings,

old hockey gear

infused with sweat.

I ducked

but still banged my head

on the heavy joists of darkly burnished wood,

rough cut

from old growth timber.

The concrete floor was cold, hard, and unevenly poured,

the walls

cinderblock.

But I’m told that before we came

it was dirt,

and an old coal furnace

rumbled in a corner

spewing soot and toxic smoke.

I suppose cellar

would be more appropriate.

Or perhaps crypt, sepulchre, catacomb.

And my childhood imagination

just made it worse;

straining to hear

scurrying feet and sinister moans

as I fumbled for the light switch.

The brush of spider silk

across my face

would rocket me instantly back

vowing never to return.

Which I can’t

ever since the old house burned.

Ever since the creepy-crawlies that thrived down there,

the rodents

that scurried and fought

and gnawed on the wiring,

and the spirits of the dead

that stalked zombie-like

through its cramped confines

either fled

or were caught unaware.

There’s no going back, they say.

Yet I remember this place

with chilling clarity.

Because fear and revulsion

leave the strongest impression.

Because in childhood

everything is bigger

and more intense.

So while the rest of the house is vague,

the basement

is vivid as ever.

And I’m still looking down

apprehensively,

still cocking my ears for threats.

Find myself going warily

into the unknown

and imagining worse.

Even when I know better.

Even when I know

that ghosts don’t exist

spiders aren’t threatening

and no one’s out to get me.

That the only enemy

lies within.

The Earth is Roughly Pear-Shaped - Jan 29 2025

 

The Earth is Roughly Pear-Shaped

Jan 29 2025

It’s not that the globe is a sphere

or the oceans separate.

There is, after all, only one great sea.

And unlike tectonic plates

grinding against each other

lines on a map can be erased,

redrawn

by acquiescence

or force of arms.

And while scholars may argue

that right and wrong are absolute

and man-made law is relative,

morality is private;

but we all know

the only real law

is what you get away with.

So is nothing as it seems?

Is even the ground under my feet

as solid as it feels,

or will it too

shake, shift, and liquify

open up and fall away?

I seek certainty.

But then, I sought comfort

and it didn’t bring contentment;

sought happiness

without knowing how to get it,

or more important

what it meant.

Perhaps it’s the word itself.

Too smiley, too trite

like pretty and nice.

A happy-face

eating a happy meal;

a happy family,

or one, at least

that makes it look that way.

Or is happy a word like interesting,

too ambiguous

to nail down?

How interesting

you say evasively,

the sort of wishy-washy compliment

that can cut either way?

Or could it be

that happiness was in the seeking

and there all along?

Or not in the seeking at all

but in absence,

not by addition

but by means of subtraction?

The renunciation

of status

stuff

desire,

the satisfaction of needs

instead of wants.

Because when nothing’s as it seems

it makes sense that less is more.

And why bother with right and wrong

when lawlessness

just makes the strong stronger

and the weak afraid?

Or bother with solid ground,

when the earth is mostly water

and continents collide?

In a world of uncertainty

attachment is unwise.

To your earthly treasure

admirers

success.

To your legacy.

Because this too shall pass.

Because even you

won’t last forever

or be remembered long.

I think I was looking at earth from space. At how from a distance our presumptions change: the shape of the planet; the coalescence of the various oceans into one great sea; the artificiality of national boundaries.

Where it went from there was more stream of consciousness. Some interesting ideas. But not so sure how coherent it is. I suppose the unifying theme is uncertainty, the illusion of both permanence and absolutes.

Although I believe there are universal truths: physical law, the nature of the universe. And that right vs wrong is clear. But also that morality is more instrumental than spiritual, and therefore perhaps not as universal/absolute as we’d prefer to think: that things like altruism, empathy, self-sacrifice, an ethos of collectivism, marital fidelity, shame, and guilt have all been selected for in our evolution as a social species, necessary for our survival. (Because we are tribal and interdependent: ostracism is a death sentence; the “self-made man” is a conceit; libertarianism and individualism only take one so far.) Have we chosen between virtue and vice? Exercised moral agency? Or are we simply the instruments of how we were made? So what we regard as good is really just what works, and in some other circumstance might come out differently.

The reflections on happiness are both borrowed and mine. Such a great history of scholarship, religion, philosophy here: what constitutes “the good life”; what does it mean to be happy, and how/where is happiness to be found?

40 Words for Snow - Jan 27 2025

 

40 Words for Snow

Jan 27 2025

A high pressure system barrels in,

dry arctic air

on a fierce north wind

I could lean all my weight against

and still not fall.

Or so it seems,

if I only had the nerve

to lean in all the way.

It scours the open fields,

freeze-drying the snow

into styrofoam.

So instead of slogging through

halfway to my knees

step by arduous step

I stride over the top.

As if I could levitate.

As if, instead of snow-stayed

the world had opened up

and I was free to wander

at will.

Traversing the frozen lakes.

Fording impassable swamps.

Making a bee-line

over uneven ground.

As if the roots and rocks and toppled trees

had been bulldozed aside,

turning the densely tangled woods

into a thoroughfare.

If they really had 40 words for snow

what would this be called?

Sprung, uncaged, unbound?

At least until the first warm spell,

when winter closes in

and the world once again

constricts around me.

And of course they had 40 words.

What else, when your life depends on it.

When snow can set you free

and keep you warm,

can beautify the world

as well as replenish it.

But also bury you.

Can trap your arms and legs

under its leaden weight

where even sound doesn’t escape.

Can leave

you gasping

for what little air is left.