Vanitas

Scott Fraser, "Three Way Mirror," c. 2006

The rain glazed a mirror upon which we drove,
its silvered runoff rippling in thin sheets across
the highway. There should have been few cars,
but there was traffic, thickening, slowing, then
gradually stopping. “It must be an accident up
ahead,” I said. No sirens, no real sound, just an
intermittent brushy pulse from the windshield
wipers, muted rain. Red lights, brakes tapping
on and off through the merging lines, and then
wreckage: rat’s nests of torn wires in crushed
glass, a dissection of everything that had been
whole. Yellow shrouds as we passed. Suffering
witnessed by the slow procession of strangers
in bits of broken chrome reflecting on those we
presumed dead, their families, our finite selves.