Ambulance
Graveyard
by
Thomas Alan Orr
Where
the highway bends
toward
sunset, before the bridge
and
along the river, no lights flash,
no
klaxons wail. They sit abandoned,
these
chariots of mercy splashed
with
blood-colored rust, now slipping
into
the silt like a patient going under –
a
fifty-nine C-10 Suburban
strewn
with empty vials and I-V bags,
a
newer Kenworth on its final run
when
a tractor-trailer bashed it in.
Crows
like mourners gather atop
the
hoods as though on coffin lids.
Offer
thanks for service rendered,
the
gift of succor in distress, just as
the
foreign visitor said, amazed,
“In
America the ambulance really comes!”
But
these will come no more, bereft
of
precious human cargo now,
though
haven of a different kind,
home
to skunks and coons
and
river otters leaping scattered tires.
Wild
blackberries grow in the grill,
feeding
squirrels, mice, and birds.
Life
prevails. Two kids salvage
an
old chrome horn that only
they
can hear for rescues far away.
About
the poet: Orr's
most recent collection is Tongue
to the Anvil: New and Selected Poems (Restoration
Press).