The Walk Away

MARC JAMPOLE

He walks away without a scratch

                                     upended car impressed against a tree

transitioned from the flash of dream-world dead

                                     dissecting tires and piston trickle near

his face and hands enflamed with fear of ceasing

                                     movement, frieze of jagged branch mosaic

tumbles with his skidding tug of seatbelt round around

                                     around a crack in snake-skin windshield fallen, stiff,

caressed by weeping blood is why he’s here is why he’s here,

                                     who cares whose turn it is to turn away

and still to see the maul of dead, the scrum of auto parts

                                     in duck blind ducking hurtled arrows’ aching

screams of stopping wake awake awake to stagnant cipher,

                                     toasted sweetness reek of drunken leaves and peat

becomes a thing that neither touches nor is touched,

                                     eternity in an instant, an instant in eternity

and then the real: he walks away, a different me in him,

                                     a me exhausted but inflexible, drained of mystery,

stripped of all-impeding them and theirs.