TO THE YOUNG MAN WHO CRIED OUT “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” WHEN I BACKED INTO HIS CAR -- Lynne Knight

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

TO THE YOUNG MAN WHO CRIED OUT “WHAT WERE YOU
THINKING?” WHEN I BACKED INTO HIS CAR
by Lynne Knight

I was thinking No. No, oh no. Not one more thing.
I was thinking my mother, who sat rigid
in the passenger seat crying, How terrible!
as if we had hit a child not your front bumper,
would drive me mad, and then there would be
two of us mad, mother and daughter, and things
would be easier, they said things would be easier
once she went to the other side, into complete total
madness. I was thinking how young you looked,
how impossibly young, and trying to remember
myself young, my body, my voice, almost another
person, and I wanted to weep for all I had let
come and go so casually, lovers, cities, flowers,
and then I was thinking You little shit for the way
you stood outside my window with your superior air
as if I were a stupid old woman with a stupid old woman
beside her, stood shouting What were you thinking?
as if I were incapable of thought, as I nearly was,
exhausted as I’d become tending my mother,
whom I had just taken to the third doctor in so many
days, and you shouting your rhetorical question
then asking to see my license, your li-cense, slowly,
as if I would not understand the word, and the lover
who made me feel as if I never knew anything
appeared then, stepped right into your body saying
What were you thinking? after I had told him, sobbed
to him, that I thought he was, I thought he was,
I thought we would—and then my mother began
to cry, as if she had stepped into my body, only years
before, or was it after, and suddenly I saw the whole
human drama writ plain, a phrase I felt I had never
understood until then, an October afternoon in Berkeley,
California, warm, warm, two vehicles stopped in
heavy traffic on campus, a woman deciding to make way
for a car trying to cross Gayley, act of random kindness
she thought might bring her luck then immediately—
right before impact—knew would be bad luck,
if it came, being so impure in its motive,
and then the unraveling of the beautiful afternoon
into anger and distress that would pass unnoticed
by most of the world, would soon be forgotten by those
witnessing the event, and eventually those experiencing it
while the sun went on lowering itself toward the bay
and ginkgo trees shook their gold leaves loose
until a coed on the way home from class, unaware
a car had backed into another car, unaware of traffic,
stopped to watch the shower of gingko, thought of Zeus
descending on the sleeping Danaë in a shower of gold,
and smiled over all her own lover would do
in the bright timeless stasis before traffic resumed.

–from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

Comments

[martyoutloud.livejournal.com]

This makes my heart larger. Rattle strikes again with the good stuff.

[redcliches.livejournal.com]

I got chills reading this, which surprised me.

[thedorkygirl.livejournal.com]

thanks.

[joseishijin.livejournal.com]

I want to punch the little shit who yelled at her...

I love this poem; thanks for posting it.

[cimeara.livejournal.com]

I want to punch the little shit who yelled at her...

But what this says is that no one needs to punch him. That the immediate in only an instance of the general, that one person yelling at another happens, did happen, will happen again, the same and ever different. And he'll be the one in the car with someone yelling "What were you thinking?" at him, or maybe he'll still be the one saying "What were you thinking?" but in pain, in sorrow, in despair to someone who did so much more than dent the front bumper of his car.

Or, well, so it says to me.

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

I like you, kathryn aka kat. I think you've said what I wanted to, only far better.

[cimeara.livejournal.com]

I was in a low spot, and the poem, and your comment, have helped more than you know. Thank you!

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

You are welcome, Kathryn.