Lucky
The picture on page eight tells the end of a story:
the bed of the huge dump truck is resting too obviously
where the driver’s seat of the car should be.
Even before I see the bold type proclaiming, plainly,
“Deadly Limestone,” I sense this is more
than a simple case of a ruined automobile,
an astonished man coming home from work
to discover a capsized, six-wheel leviathan
lying on top of his neighbor’s car.
The caption says the workers had to wear masks
because of the dust, but that’s not what I want to know.
I want to know about the “woman occupant,”
as the paper calls her, who was killed.
Was she married? Happily, or not?
Was her life going well, or did the accident put an end
to a long struggle? How do you tell someone
that it’s no joke—that their wife, mother, or daughter
has been killed in this ridiculous fashion?
That if only she hadn’t taken a minute to make sure
she had her makeup right, she would only be calling
the insurance company, her family and friends,
telling everyone how lucky she was.
Southern Indiana Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (1994)
