What the newborn sees while he flies

out of his mother’s Ford Explorer flipping on I-10
after hitting ice: the horrified face of a grandfather,
his silver Accord skidding wildly, as he glimpses
a baby in a car seat spinning past his windshield;

an eighteen wheeler braking on slick cement
in the expert hands of a trucker who once saved
a drunken driver in a swollen stream; IHOP,
where travelers devour pancakes, eggs, and bacon

and wait for better weather, and a cook, with a toddler
napping at home, works a double shift.
The infant won’t remember reeling images or the cop
who freed his anguished mother, bruised yet whole,

or his partner, after a puzzling search in a steady drizzle,
plucking the child, flushed but unharmed, from bramble.

This article appears in Spring Literary Review 2021.