Time Stopped
by Scott Shaffer

On a bright, pleasant Saturday afternoon,
I’m content, alone, driving the speed limit in town.

As I peek to the right, before moving into that lane,
the car warning blares; my eyes snap back left!

A car (burgundy SUV?) has stopped–
dead in my path! Where’d that come from?!

Without thinking, I veer right. Everything seems to stop.
For a few seconds, I feel, somehow, outside of time–

like when my toddler granddaughter and I
play with toy cars on a mat of make-believe roads;

sometimes I pick up one above the mat, move it
through the air to another spot, rather than “drive” it–

next thing I know I’m cruising in the right lane,
marveling: no shock, no crash, no screeching metal,

no body blows, moans, no mangled wreckage!
As I drive away from averted disaster,

I don’t understand what just happened;
but I’m strangely at perfect peace. I have a sense

of having briefly been in another dimension.
I hear myself saying over and over, “Thank you, God.”



 

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