It's Still Life

I Didn’t Know Her All That Well, But

See that cherry red VW van up ahead?
It’s the same colour as the VW campervan
that a woman I knew (years ago) owned,

although I didn’t know her at all well,
and I can’t recall her name, but

she worked as a summer season
live-bait girl on one of the fishing boats
out of Westport. Tourists poured in
hoping to catch a cod or a king salmon,

and she would twist and thread
squirming bait on their hooks, but

one night when she was driving home,
she took a sharp corner, the one
just before the two-pump Shell station,
took it just a little bit too fast, and she

and that van went straight off the road
and plunged into a salt water tidal marsh.

She wasn’t hurt, pure luck owing to where
her VW van landed, but she took it as a sign —
dumped her husband, and took off with
the skipper of the fishing boat.

I have no idea what’s happened to her.
As I said, I didn’t know her at all well.

A dialogue poem for AprPAD Day 19: Licence (fishing, driving, etc)