Rail Runner Express Crash On I-25 South of Santa Fe
One summer day, I witness the murder
of speed and money,
a train and armored car twined beneath a pockmarked sun.
I missed the tire squeal
but sat in the nervous framework of vehicles that bloomed
down the Interstate. An ambulance
had been dispatched. We all gawked
as an EMT tended the scrapes and whispers
flung against the road – in this threadbare spot
where the gasoline truck toppled, then exploded,
several months back, metal
melting around an unsuspecting driver.
Even now I fear the whack, the severed bodies
swallowing thready air.
How much easier it is to be looking over what has
rolled-over,
through light fragmented
on the underside of someone else’s car.
Until we meet tomorrow’s headline, we continue driving
forward, frantically strategizing details
and errands. But this is my bend in the road, our wrecked railing.
A personality test defines me as lemon-sour
so I take the test again, changing answers.
Forgive me.
This time it calls me blue
and I become a river of blue, flowing back and forth
on the Interstate in my beat-up Subaru,
never putting my compassion down,
never leaving the road with my imperfect eyes.
--Lauren Camp
Featured Poet, Lauren Camp is the author of the poetry collection, This Business of Wisdom (West End Press), and is the host/producer of “Audio Saucepan,” a weekly music/poetry show on KSFR-FM. She is also a visual artist. Lauren blogs about poetry and its intersections with art and music at Which Silk Shirt. She lives in a rural farming village near Santa Fe. www.laurencamp.com
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