A Drive Down Memory Lane . . .

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. . The Vanishing Point
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Sometimes it does not take much
Just the faintest suggestion
The softest touch of a hint
To bring the memories flooding back
And this sometimes is why we blog
To exorcise those ghosts ?
To let a bit of one's true self show ?
Fearing to say too much
Wanting to say more
Hiding, hiding
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I wonder some nights
If I may be a cat
With nine lives
Some of them gone by now
Which could explain
Why certain days
I simply hate to drive
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The road through the forest
Is long and straight
Built by Romans to last
Even if the builders did not
As I drive that road at night
At the very far visible end
There is often a point of light
The vanishing point
Invariably it says to me
You too will reach
Your personal vanishing point
One day, one night
Yet I drive down that road
Do not turn back
And the vanishing point
Draws near but recedes
For now
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If nine lives had I
Then at least four are gone
In four wrecked cars
I was a passenger in
Which could explain
Why I hate to drive
Flying is safer by far
Even if sadly
Entire aeroplanes
Sometimes fall
From the sky
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Age 19, an afternoon
Spent with friends
At a racing track
Stupid kid stuff
Driving home from there
The driver thought
He was still on the fast track
He missed the second half
Of an "S" turn at 60 mph
Hit a tree bounced off
Slid up the road 75 feet
The guy next to me
In the back seat
Fractured his skull
I was just dazed
Fell down when
I tried to walk away
From the smoking wreck
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Age 20 after a college football game
Spent drinking whiskey in the stands
Four idiots piled in a car to go
Who knows where
One minute later the car plowed
Into a bridge pillar
One idiot from the back seat, me,
Flew forward and broke
The rearview mirror off
The windshield
The next morning he was found
Lying in a dormitory hall on the floor
With a white chalk outline around him
Like the corpse after a shooting
Having no idea how he got there
Fortunately, a girl took him in
And nursed his wounds that day
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Age 25, hitchhiking in France
A BMW to take me from Macon
to Bourg en Bresse was t-boned
At a blind intersection
The driver was hospitalized
Me, I just had a sore neck
The car was totaled
The frame was bent
Broken glass all over
Car wrecks are an awful sound
Usually preceded by
The protesting squeal
Of rubber burning
From skidding tires
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Age 28, coming home
From a visit to the grandparents' place
My father was driving
Trying to pass a pick up truck
On a back New Jersey road
When the truck turned left
Down a side road
The impact was hard
And sent us into the trees
I had been trying to sleep
In the back seat
Took off flying into
The back of the front seats
Wrenched the neck again
To this day
Have trouble sleeping in cars
And my neck still hurts
When it rains
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Four wrecks as a passenger
Never as the driver
But that could change tomorrow
Driving is an awful lottery
Far more dangerous
Than flying
Sometimes I think
I can taste my death
And it tastes like blood
From punctured lungs
Coming out in fine drops
Around broken teeth
How many lives do I have left
I wonder
As I gaze up the road
At the vanishing point. . .
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And I apologize if in writing this and posting these pictures here that I took in a junkyard, if I have appalled anyone; but car wrecks are an appalling subject, and more people have been victims of crashes than one might imagine, with varying degrees of gravity, and varying levels of post traumatic stress disorder. My intention is not to be maudlin or depressing, this is catharsis. This is therapeutic. These days I try to forget all that, and try to laugh over the little pleasures in life. . . but some days, the memories are there, and will not easily leave.
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So tell me, has it ever happened to you ? Are we not lucky to still be here ? Yes, I think . . .
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Hard to believe this was ever actually an automobile at all . . .
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The scrapyard blues . . .
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