Blue bird

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This morning a blue bird with tangerine belly splashed in our terracotta bird bath. Our summer sneaks closer with this first visit in how many years? Too quick for a photograph, but here nonetheless, providing hope for longer days. Summer teases with a bird this morning then with a black car crash on our road this afternoon.

They say he was teasing. He teased and she swatted his arm and drove off the road, skipping like a stone over the ditch in a dust cloud. She drove between the neighbor's fence and mail box, a mere 6 ' wide, over the neighbor's driveway, and even past the 3' diameter redwood; next flying over our driveway, through the corner fence into the maple tree. Somewhere in that flight the airbags go off and then they climb out.
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The horn honks insistently.
"What is that sound?" I ask.
"A stuck car horn." he answers.
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Not until a phone call 10 minutes later did we wonder why and realized a car was in our tree.
"Maybe you should go see." I say.
"Why?"
"Because maybe it's something we should know. Do you want me to go with you?"

"Whatever you want."

"That's not an answer to my question.", I insist, "If you want me to go with, you could say, 'Yes, I want you to go with me.' "

"Ok, fine."

...

I stop mid next sentence, having found this an abrupt solution to my shame at talking; talking past anyone's comfort, anyone's interest. I hear myself and feel a fool. I want go back a few seconds to find a fine place to stop, but I continue on, hearing myself again and then again, finally I just shut up in an uncoordinated way. ASAP.

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Crashes on Bodega Avenue are endless. Hard to believe no one realizes it's dangerous driving home from the beach. Hard to believe they are driving home near our home, but not near enough their destination to have energy leftover from the thrill of a romantic sandy walk. Not exhilarated enough to keep the sunny, afternoon drowse at bay. No, just far enough away for beer to really soak the veins, slowing reflexes just as age will do later on. Young doesn't know what slowing is.
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I misread the bumper sticker and offer a prayer, fool that I am. Who am I besides a fool? A naive optimist, a lover of people, seeing the accident in a heartfelt rosy light. Dramatic concern expands my pink heart, my wide open caring heart, beating fast. Children, young adults, fair and fresh, sat on the up-heaved redwood trunk, shivering in it's shade. One van had stopped at the dust flying, and left. Minutes later a sailor parked across the road, "I'm trained, in the military." He notices and records, this you can see in his tanned blond crewcut. Then the cross the road neighbor who is as polite as the others at her house are not, even 25 years later. I read a ribald bumper sticker and misunderstand.
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Huge, looming red chrome trauma trucks from the station down the street power to the scene five minutes after everyone left for the next shift; now called back, never having understood the honking horn. Walkie talkies communicate something. I talk too much to too many to communicate also, fool that I am, most foolish of all about the prayer, but plenty foolish about the need to know and tell while medics brace necks. Foolish enough for my own pink face to walk away, fast, into the house. The horn stops honking.
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Today's paper tells of a Brown University student who took a semester at Jerry Falwell's college, politely, carefully documenting in a notebook in the bathroom stall. He is forgiven by understanding and patient, likable students when he returns, though not by those that be. He writes an honest book, telling all in a fair way. He thinks he may become a church goer. He knows not to offer to pray for drunk drivers who eat so much salt water taffy that it falls, pink and white out the passenger door onto the oily dirt near our maple. Myself foolish enough all these years later, still seeing in my mind salty Pacific water filling a candy cooker at the beach.
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At our house, CHP talks while writing up, while we clean up.
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"Suspended license."
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Implying no insurance for our roadside fence destroyed in sharp redwood pieces in the dumpster. Red at the breaks and grey outside as aged redwood boards are wont to do. Red wood so old, we don't even know.

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