Scene of an Accident

Scene After An Accident

Lost my car in some wild
Speeding and craziness.

What do I do if the brakes fail?
Survive. I think. I forget.

Now I'm walking on the road's soft shoulders.
Springtime and weeds talk country matters in the gravel,
Under the melted butter sun.

A snake, only as long as a pencil, green
As cooked spinach, glides over my bare left foot.
So gentle, but I am waiting for the panic
Frozen hard as solid silver
And waiting for the lethal flinch.

My nerves aren't steel, they're silver.

I wish someone was there to witness my luck, for I have
Often pointed out the X's on my palms
To friends and said, "See, I'm always protected."
They laughed. But luck comes from the gods;
If there were proof of it anywhere, it would be in my
Crossed palms.

Improbably, while sleeping,
I see the snake again-or is it a different spinach-coloured snake?
It's the same road.
It's the same me, walking along with a crab-apple bush
to lean on as a staff
(My brain is bad at props)
My spinach snake is being eaten
by a psychopathic serpant servant of ferocity
Who is the colour of lima beans, who has the same expression
-toothed and diacritical-

and narrow-eyed
as my biology teacher.

We are nowhere near a crossroads
And I have neither skill on the blues guitar,
To call forth the saviour of Robert Johnson,
Nor a straight staff to thrust between the devouring snakes,
Invoking the old thief.
Nothing to shut up snotty evolution
but X's in my palms,
and the bush of sour temptation, Eve's sour grapes
and a song that is my own and old enough.