Every time I drove to my friend’s
house I saw the dead deer in the road.
First she lay as a shapely but stricken form, her orangey
fur stretched over high ribs, her small black hooves lying like tossed dice on
the asphalt, her head resting on pebbles and the chuff of roadways.
Each time I drove there, with my
own tender feelings toward my friend herded, gathered for protection inside my
ribcage, where they must stay invisible as if dead, I saw the deer – crumpling
day by day, car by car, driver by oblivious driver, into the roadway, crushed
so that even bloat couldn’t raise her up again.
She is almost disintegrated now.
Dust to dust? Sinews and muscles to
ground meat; bones to chalky splinters, hooves to powdered keratin, doe eyes to
pulp, mites to motes, and finally, after enough hot days’ pulverizing, dust to
dust.
~ August 14, 2009
