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.