As I rounded the corner late summer afternoon at fifty

As I rounded the corner late summer afternoon at fifty
I let go the wheel and prayed it was not a child I hit this time
but Byron Killswater limping dramatically towards my bumper.
He has a schedule like clock work but I am often late.
Always it is a collision met with a different mask
and, each time, there is that tell tell tail
bouncing behind him in the dust and dirt.
You see he keeps on finding the same old rubbish in the gutter
and bringing it to me like a gift claiming in his shrill,
carping voice a visceral need for repetition:
Yet another crumpled, sun bleached sheet.
This is his speciality. That,
and his limp which switches legs between legendery collisions.
As I rounded the corner late summer afternoon at fifty
I was blowing kisses at the roaring dragons,
I was raging my ragged water song.
But he, he has no heart.
He brings everything to me with his dead yellow eyes
and drops his business like some bad faith dog.
Tripping over that deadly wire, originally set for him,
was almost the undoing of me yesterday.
But I made something out of that accident.
Something new, something different.
I am not so easily put down, Mr Killswater.
I call his name above the sound of sirens
as I peel my bloody forehead from the dash board.
He now has an appearence which is fuzzy or blurred,
I cannot quite make him out.
He is mumbling something about taking corners fastly.
His legs are broken. There are bits
of him crumbling from the hot tyre tread.
That night as my tears gather to spill and raise the ink
from the last chapter of Reformation-
his latest novel in twenty seven shreds not chapters-
I clean my grazed knees with cotton buds and alcohol
and file the rough edge off a chipped tooth and I reflect.
I reflect upon that long beautiful moment,
as I rounded the corner late summer afternoon at fifty,
and let go the wheel
and traced my name freely in space.