the accident

It was an accident,
your average fender bender
with a glacial blue van
that shimmered like fish scales
in the wet intersection.

It was like gently bumping
the boy in front of you
at the water fountain line,
except the boy turns,
droplets clinging to his snarling lips,
and he is an older man
wearing a black scarf and a camel coat
blooming blotchy as his face.

What were you thinking, he keeps saying.
It’s only a week old.
I count my husband’s apologies
through the windshield,
his hair spiking with the salty spray
of rain and rising frustration.

The words between them are choppy,
compressed as suddenly
as the space between
our bumper and his.

The scarfed man looks at me, darkly.
I am impassive and buoyant,
bobbing aimlessly as a bird
in the gray passenger sea.

His wife, in her matching camel boots,
emerges from the yawning whale’s mouth
and rounds behind the wheezing newborn,
a leviathan transport netted from the deep.

The whale and I sigh heavily under her scrutiny.
She runs her hand quickly
along the wet bumper, flinging a sheet of water
over our shared maritime misfortune,
and I can feel the fin smooth under her fingers,
as smooth as cerulean sea glass,
tumbled up on concrete shore.



p.s. I also wanted to title this "The Fin-der Bender" or "A Whale of a Tale" but decided it didn't quite go with the poem's tone. :)