An Audible Crash.

 

An Audible Crash.

  © -MFB III 

While tooling along

in my Plymouth Miser
reading a script and

taping it for rehearsel,
on the freeway at about seventy,
I glanced up from my lines to find,
a wall of semis 

just ahead of me,
not far enough away

to sanely avoid
blocking all three

lanes of my path.

I stepped with

even pressure
on the brake,

heart in my throat,
visions of decapitation

in my head,
and pulled my

steering wheel
all the way,

 hard to the right,
while mumbling some

long overdue prayers.

My Marine Corps

Military Police training
on a suicide driving course

must have taken over,
as my car swung

completely sideways,
in a huge loop to the right

while my front bumper,
slid into the guardrail

alongside the road.

I literally was grinding

like a skatebaorder,
along its length in

the opposite direction
away from the sure

death of the semis.

Cars behind me

slowed and stopped,
time crawled to an eternity,
as the shrieking of

metal and fiberglass,
and the rush of

adrenaline and fear,
was halted with the friction

of my vehicle
traveling over 30 yards

hooked to the guardrail.

Then it stopped,

and shakened

I opened the door.
A lady behind me was shouting,
"Oh, my God.....

are you all right?!

"Are you all right??"

I checked my

front end to find that
my car had massive paint burn,
the guardrail was intact,
and my limbs though

quivering still worked.

I assured her I was

fine and then,
I backed up carefully

and drove away.

Later that day,

while listening to my lines,
I heard the whole crash again,
caught on the tiny

reels of the mini cassette.

Imagine if I had died,

perhaps slowly,
or had been severly

injured in that crash.
All of the horror would

have been on that tape.

I keep that same tape

in the ashtray of my car
even now, many years

later as a reminder,
to rehearse my driving

and save my lines
for solid unmoving ground.
Oh, and I got the part,
being dramatic came

easy that day.