CAR TIME IS
by Sandra Lindow
Time is too slow for those who wait
And time is too swift for those who fear*
Cars are womb wonders, mobile mothers,
umbilicals that bind us every day,
warm in winter, cool in summer.
Driving to work, bursting through sunlit,
leaf change loose fall October,
my little blue Fiesta was easy labor,
sky like the cover of It’s a Beautiful Day.
I always thought danger came
in big packages:
semis, cement mixers, garbage, gravel, beer-big guys, big trucks,
a cocktail mix of fear,
but I was blindsided
down by the Jesus Church,
slammed sideways by a Buick,
barging a stop sign,
swung like sunset at midday
past the Macho Messiah
coffee house sandwich board.
Emerging mostly unharmed,
from the modus of my operandi,
I met my Nemesis midstreet,
little lady in bottle-sized bifocals,
grandmother in go-to-meeting clothes,
weeping her way to a funeral,
blessed that it wasn’t ours,
who cried that she didn’t see,
trying to comfort me
while I consoled her,
and my beloved, baby blue car lay
unswaddled, unbaptised, umbilicals torn,
unbreasted like breast cancer,
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