Wreck

​Walking past a telephone pole struck by a car,
I see the pole has been righted,
the wires repaired. I drove by earlier today
as firemen strapped the driver’s head
to a spinal board. Plastic and fiberglass detritus
is still scattered on the ground, easily overlooked
testimony of the sudden appearance
of an impediment
in the path of the texting driver, perhaps looking up
from his phone just in time to imagine
what was about to happen to him,
what he was about to feel.
But, as in any epiphany,
that object did not appear, much less
suddenly, and was only experienced
as having done so.Blind or distracted soul,
what are you careening toward, and what
already waits to appear
to you
with bone-shattering suddenness, and awaits
not only what damage it will do,
but what damage it will receive,
tilting and splintered
against your headlong and heedless embrace?

Luke Hankins is the author of a collection of poems, Weak Devotions, and the editor of Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets (both from Wipf & Stock). His latest book, The Work of Creation: Selected Prose, was released by Wipf & Stock this January. Hankins is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit