Some time late in the 1990s, there was a very bad accident in a city park in Allentown, PA. Five young men were crammed in to a two-door car traveling approximately 47 miles an hour down a park road that had a posted speed limit of 15 miles per hour. As the car approached a 90-degree curve onto a bridge exiting the park, the driver lost control and hit a wooden post and wire guardrail. The car was vaulted into the air, landing upside down in a water-filled canal. The young men ranged in age from 14 to 19 years old. All five had been drinking and smoking marijuana. The driver was found to have been legally drunk at the time of the accident. All five young men drowned in the car.
I wrote the following poem in 1998 in remembrance of the five young men and that fateful night.
Five boys looking right,
Traveling like lightening through the night.
Could it be?
Would these five boys go
Down the gamut of death
On one final flight?
© 1998 Steven Barto
