Uncle teaches how to drive on ice

 

Uncle teaches how to drive on ice

Like falling in love, Uncle says.
Steer into the skid, not away.
Feather touch on the wheel.
Bridges freeze first but—Sammy frowns—
one time near the Snake River
hidden ice not playing nice
sent his old pickup skating
so he steered into the slide, pumped brakes
and stopped plumb at the canyon’s edge.

Not far behind him
an AmeriGas delivery truck.

Even in a blizzard you can foresee future,
headlights through a veil of swirling flakes
so he bails from the old Ford face-first
into a snowbank just before a 16 ton tank
of liquified petroleum gas
like a giant hockey puck
plows through the pickup
down toward the Snake.

The cab submerges. Bubbles.

Soft the silence,
snow falling in sheets—

and a woman appears
clawing up the embankment
spitting curses
ejected halfway down
fractured arm but she can climb.

She’s a blue-black ponytail,
a white parka, red blood dripping,
she’s an eagle with broken wing.

Says she’s gonna sue somebody’s ass
sure as her name is Sacajawea Jones and then
go home to Louisiana where it’s warm
and purchase land down there.

Aunt Sac. Why her crooked arm.
Already on the black ice
Uncle Sammy’s in love.

……

First published in The Ekphrastic Review
The image is a painting called “Winter Chaos” by Marsden Hartley to which I’ve added an eagle. The poem is a true story which I’ve improved likewise as everyone does to history, especially the history of the American West.