Master Larson's Death

Master Larson's Death

My first death was a friend unrecognized,

Marred by wounds that proved his mortality

Heaving his final breaths at the end of his trail,

Stretching out into the fog

Like a leprechaun's trick at the end of an all red rainbow.

He was spewed like a cursed Jonah

From the mouth of a broken fish

As it crashed upon the rocks barring its way,

Unseen in an earth bound cloud,

Rendering crooked paths straight to a deceived eye,

To a distracted child's mind,

Rushing unheeding to an early grave.

I watched helpless and grieving

as his heaving

ceased.

This is based on a true event. Coming home late one night in a thick fog, I was speeding down a back road in New England that I knew well. A Volkswagen beetle was just ahead of me as we zoomed on. As we drew near to a particularly dangerous section of road, I slowed. The driver in the Volkswagen did not. I pulled up behind the wreckage seconds later. The Volkswagen had bounced like a pinball though a sharp S-turn ricocheting off the trees. I got out. The people in the car were crying and screaming with pain. One broke his back. Another both legs. The driver, however, was no where to be seen. His door was open and off its hinges. I followed a trail of blood on the road through the fog, hardly able to see a foot in front of me. I found the driver at the end of the streak he'd left as he flew from the car and skidded into fog. I stood with him, afraid to touch him. The road had done a great deal of damaged. I watched as his violent heaving breaths just stopped. The next day, I found out that I knew him. He was in the grade behind me. Our school was small and everyone knew everyone. I wouldn't have known him that night, however, even if he's been my own brother.