On the drive home in the morning

The man who almost hit me
shoves his whole self close
to the dashboard to see my face,
more than my small red car which is
not nearly enough information
on someone who might have been
thirty minutes of his life or even
forty-five, depending on the damage,
even, he thinks to himself mostly
in a joking way,

someone who would
see the bumper - torn
like a smug photo of an old lover
straight down the middle,
in this imagined case between the curve
of the bumper and the actual metal of
the functional part of the hood -

and look up at the sorry face
of this man - late for a lunch with a woman
he no longer wants to meet with for any reason,
much less the one he's meeting her for -

and say here's the keys to this car that you've ruined
take it and repair it
using tools from your garage
and the skills your daddy taught you.
and then we'll talk.