Like a Lightning Crash

Photo by Andy Magee

The Mag #148

Respecting the rain is not an observation that one does automatically like waving to a passerby or holding the door for another.  It is an appreciation one acquires when experience has led them to a knowledge that before did not exist.  This true regard does not come slowly like guitar lessons nor learning to love martinis, it is a split second shift of knowing.  Fast like a lightning crash it happens, the moment that the wheels and the road no longer have the right connection.  Looking back in slow motion, it is almost like a dance; a glide to the left and then maybe another swift move to the right, but when it happens, it is NO dance!  One finds them self screaming and holding the wheel as if it were the ledge of a building they were about to fall off of.  And it is like a fall, a horrible fall.  Once the movement has stopped, depending on what the object of destination is.  It could be a road sign, a ditch or another car even, but it all happens too fast for complete recall. You just know when it is over you had no control of the outcome.  No control at all!  From that moment forward you never take driving in the rain lightly.  You have a new found respect for the relationship between a wet road and your car. 

There are moments in life
that change the way
we see the road ahead.
A briliant light of knowing
that peirces through
our blindness
like headlights
in the night
it is a hearkening
that is birthed
not from words
but deeds
life's way where
the thud of a fall
can knock the sense
into a soul faster
than any words
could ever prove
the truth.