What ripple in the ether
made me ignore the map
and turn left instead of right,
I don’t know.  I had somewhere to be
but still I took the left instead of the right

and ended up crossing a narrow bridge
over a cold, fast river
with the gas running low
and not a station in sight;

still, I kept driving with the insane thought
that somewhere over here there had to be fuel
and I would be able to continue the detour
for a while yet, even though the woods
had closed around the road and the dark of winter
had settled into threat.

As I turned a corner, green eyes lit up ahead of me
and with no time or place to turn,
I flinched and drove straight on
praying that whatever it was —
fox or cat, dog or skunk —
would get out of the way: but
no such luck, not for the creature
I felt under my wheels
as I swerved left, and then right, after
the sickening squish and crunch.

When I looked up, there was an Exxon sign
not fifty yards ahead.  I drove there,
turned left into the pumps
and then right onto the road
after I refilled my tank
while refusing to look at my tires or bumper

and there was the on-ramp for my road home.

Sometimes, we don’t make a turn for our own reasons,
or we make a turn for no reasons we can name.
If we’re smart, we don’t look back at where we were
and we choose to believe in luck, or fate,
or the Shadow that tricks our green-lit eyes
into thinking we’re so in control of the way home.
into thinking we control what