He's the first on the scene of an accident
or a child is seriously injured.
He picks her up.
He has very large hands.
Looney has very large hands and almost no neck.
The Chevrolet dealer calls him a troglodyte.
He doesn't know what that means.
But he's the first one there.
And he picks her up very gently and puts her into a car.
And she survives.
And he takes great pride in feeling
that he has helped in the saving of her life.
Poem number 13.
That hot August night, I was the first to reach her.
Her face laid open like a movie.
There was rubber in the air, and the driver of the car
not unable to grip his fingers stuck like a fly on glue
behind the wheel.
And the girl seemed not much heavier than a scrap of pine.
Her little blood, a warm uneasy tickling at my hands.
And someone said later, he had never noticed them before,
the hands.
How brown, how big is buckets?
And the child hung on.
Its foot, its face full grown now
saying hello, hello to Looney from its twisted smile.