It was night, it had rained, there were pieces of cars and <br />half-cars strewn, it was still, and bright, <br />a woman was lying on the highway, on her back, <br />with her head curled back and tucked under her shoulders <br />so the back of her head touched her spine <br />between her shoulder-blades, her clothes <br />mostly accidented off, and her <br />leg gone, a long bone <br />sticking out of the stub of her thigh— <br />this was her her abandoned matter, <br />my mother grabbed my head and turned it and <br />clamped it into her chest, between <br />her breasts. My father was driving—not sober <br />but not in this accident, we’d approached it out of <br />neutral twilight, broken glass <br />on wet black macadam, like an underlying <br />midnight abristle with stars. This was <br />the world—maybe the only one. <br />The dead woman was not the person <br />my father had recently almost run over, <br />who had suddenly leapt away from our family <br />car, jerking back from death, <br />she was not I, she was not my mother, <br />but maybe she was a model of the mortal, <br />the elements ranged around her on the tar— <br />glass, bone, metal, flesh, and the family.<br /><br />Sharon Olds<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/still-life-in-landscape/
