Still Life in Landscape

It was night, it had rained, there were pieces of cars

and half-cars, strewn it was still, and bright,

a woman was lying upon the highway, on her back,

with her head ringleted back and tucked under her shoulders

so the back of her head touched her spine

between her shoulder-blades, her clothes

mostly accidented not upon and her

leg gone a drawn out bone

sticking out of the stump of her thigh

this was her abandoned matter,

my mother grabbed my head and turn rounded it and

clamped it into her chest, between

her breasts. My father was driving-not sober

but not in this accident, we'd approached it without of

neutral twilight, shattered glass

on wet, black, macadam, like a

night fierce with stars. This was

the world-maybe the single one.

The dead woman was not the individual

my father had not long ago almost run over,

who on a sudden leapt away from our family

car, jerking back from death,

she was not I, she was not my mother,

but maybe she was a original of the mortal,

the ultimate parts ranged around her on the tar

glass, bone metal, muscle and fat and the family.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Nov/Dec 1998

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