Roadkill Memoriam
Along this stretch of highway,
adults drive as though the shoulder were empty,
their eyes fastened to destinations.
Yet…
The roadside keeps its fallen:
a squirrel crumpled like a worn work glove,
a robin spilled red as burst chokecherries,
a pigeon flattened like a letter lost in rain,
a field mouse curled small as a dry leaf.
Grasshoppers gleam like scattered emerald pins,
while moths and butterflies rest on the pavement
like fragments of stained glass swept from a cathedral floor.
Children notice.
From the back seat they count the dead the way they would mourn pets.
A dog lies beside the white line as if waiting for its family to return;
a cat is folded softly as a forgotten blanket;
a deer stretches through the ditch like a fallen sapling from the forest;
a bear cub seems less an animal than a shadow misplaced by the mountain.
Soon…
Come questions as natural as asking why the sky is blue:
"Where do they go?"
"Do animals die from this life and come with us to a better place?"
The adults offer quiet answers, but the child keeps looking.
The road unwinds behind the car.
In the rear window,
distance gathers the dead into the shimmering heat of memory.
Then the child sees wildflowers blooming along the shoulder among the grasses, purple asters, goldenrod, white daisies lifting their faces toward the sun.
Watching them drift farther away, the child whispers to himself, "It's nice the poor animals get flowers like we do in the cemetary."
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Towards the end of the poem you brought the child into the poem, and as seen from the child's innocent eyes, the dead animals were offered flowers and it immediately eased the pain I felt for the dead animals.
Great job, Odin!!!
~ Sandie
Animal (and human) overpasses over heavily traveled roads like I 280 would help those animals you have to move to find new territory or migrate. Butterflies and birds, on the other hand tend to find our windshields and radiators.
I recall two stories like that. One was in one of those canteen adventure magazines about greedy teenagers who took great pleasure in running down animals on a beautiful road past small lakes. They ended up going off the road into deep water and they all died.
The second story was true. In our hometown a young man had a very successful sporting goods store. I remember going there and buying arrows to go late season deer hunting. He was an avid hunter who also liked to hunt with bow and arrow.
In the early morning on his way to go hunting deer, he either hit or try to avoid hitting a deer, rolled over, I believe in his new convertible, and his head was crushed. Roadkill revenge.
Ron