Like fading tornados, big wheels
and little squeals still spin
when the car turns over
on its back, a turtle
too high in the curve.
Roads buck off all riders.
Wrecks wrap around oaks
like question marks hugging
a private answer, an echo
of glass and steel in the ears
of the dead. Bigger ones
who struck it rich may bleed oil,
but their lives too slip away
from the slick black road.

We who still race about
with only dents and scratches,
making noise in the world,
would do well to heed
the screeching brakes,
the cry of twisting metal,
the silence after a storm.

–Robert S. King