Your Morning Commute

Ed Casey

In the confusion, I was snapped from my droning
reverie and forced from the feeder road
onto the interstate by a care flight helicopter
idling on the pavement, her crew
leaning against their queen, chatting,
some of them smoking. No fitful signals
of urgency; the female pilot let down
her honey hair, combed and refit it
into her helmet;

two firemen slowly walked an empty
gurney toward the droning sirens ahead.
The hour had quickly drawn closed.
The first stage of someone's grief,
with one less thought, one less
pulse, had been safely contained
on its way to sterility.
This had become a non-emergency.

Up ahead, a uniformed officer,
the city's soldier, waved us on, standing
next to a silver hog, red and riderless,
overturned in the grass. Looming
above them all, a semi sprawled
across the road, its driver quaked,
delivering a statement, waited to fall
apart like a paper sack filled with bees.

Without carnage, the traffic moves on.
At near 30,
while my cell rings,
a confused bee
thuds into glass;
a rolling stain
pollinates the windshield,
travels my field of view,
over the horizon,
back into the sky.