An abbreviated version.

I was driving at work today--yesterday-- and I saw, ahead of me, a cacaphony of silent blue-red police flashers. The officers had closed down the 4-lane highway to 2. We crawled by. East-to-West.

Who hasn't *looked* at an accident? We all have. And we hope that we don't see a gruesome splattering. We hope to look to see that all is good. That all is God. We hope to see the persons involved in the traffic accident, off on the curb, laughing and enjoying a good strong cappacino. Or, at least, we hope to see them safe. Healthy. Alive, for God's sake!

I looked. I was wondering why there weren't, like, vehichles mashed to a modernistic malaise. "Where are the smashed-up cars" I asked myself, as I crept along a normally-55MPH throughfare at 15. Where *were* the cars? The accident scene swam before me: five cop cars and an unnecessary ambulance. I kept looking left. I saw.

I saw a mangled--MANGLED--bicycle. It was pretzled. I thought, "Oh. Shit," and then I--my eyes--saw a lump covered by a policeman's tarp, glistening in the October drizzle. Underneath that yellow tarp was a dead human being. It was halfway in the street and halfway on the curb--grass.

The worst part of having a keen mind? It's the visuals that get played, repeatedly. My eyes saw nothing but a lumpy yellow policeman's tarp. My mind saw other things. (And they weren't pretty.) As I rolled along at 10MPH I thought of who was under the death shroud. Was it a 42-year-old drunken brother of a devout Catholic? Was it a 17-year-old son of a loving, preening, Mom? Could it have been a 23-year-old girl, riding her bike instead of driving her car? I drove along at ten miles an hour and my stomach seized.

I'm the owner of a pretty strong stomach. 17 won't phase me and I eat a lot of shit food. I also watch horr0r movies and have seen "death-pics" on the Internet. My stomach clenched, nonetheless. It hurt me and my heart followed suit. To die is to be expected. We all palaver with the Reaper, in time. But, Got-Damn! To die a violent, smashing, head-transforming death in front of hundreds of passersby?

I said a prayer then, as I was passing by the yellow tarp. I said aloud, "Good Lord, please help that soul." Now it sounds cheesy, but it's not. GOD, HELP THAT SOUL.

You know what the worst thing is? It's that I don't *know* who was under that police-issued yellow tarp. It could have been an old man. It could have been a 17-year-old chick. It could have been a 33-year-old male bicycle-riding drunk. And...ouch! That cuts close.

The night is old, and I'm 11-and-a-half in, but I'm not gonna sleep--Non-Daylights-Savings-Time, or not--without saying this:

"Bicyclist: May your Path to the Higher be fraught not."

Peace.