Roadside Encounter

1
Another cardboard box, split at the sides,
has toppled off the back of a pick-up truck—
Or is it a bag of leaves tied in haste?
The animal-shaped spill lifts its jaw,
the angled box carving to a backbone,
the entrails like styrofoam peanuts
coiling strangled and pale.

2
Nearing, I see its deer shape, unmistakable,
I lower the sun visor,
fiddle with the radio,
look to the left (surely there’s something else),
but my eyes drag back to the scene,
where the deer has elongated,
as she did yesterday,
after gathering herself for the leap.
My foot eases up as I crane for a closer look,
see where metal met flesh,
a chest wound, the jaw thrown back
like a saint’s agony, reaching toward the
shoulder of the road,
toward something watching in the brush.

3
Someone has veered across her—
it, the carcass—leaving tire marks
bold as the sign of a cross.
Crawling by, I see that other life has descended.
Not only the grackles that circle the air,
but their crawling cousins,
burrowing into niches
cold as the outdoors—
even their furious squirming can’t warm this place.

4
My eyes skim over the dried husk,
flattened as leather—
a saddle seen better days,
old car seat from a luxury model,
shoes, boots, piles of them,
stretched out tongue to tongue,
lascivious as a drunken cobbler who comes back—
couldn’t he?—rising out of the past
to take what’s his,
material for patching,
something worth keeping.

5
My tire blows just beyond and I pull over,
call for tools I’ve foolishly left at home,
lean against my car, as if it doesn’t bother me
that grackles cross her flank,
their tails lifted, like waitresses
in short skirts reaching for the floor.
I shoo them away—“nasty things”—
now closer than I’ve ever been,
then closer, the only tool I could find in hand—
the tire gauge like a physician’s pointer, lifting the skin.
Inside, things have quieted down:
colors decoded into meaningless statements.

6
The next morning, mended, my car hurtles past.
I almost forget to look, then in the last moment
I do look. I owe it to her,
to acknowledge our short history,
what she meant to me in those moments
that fit into the day so neatly,
there, gone, a moment’s puzzler,
then the clarity of everyday business.
Her ribs arc like a big cat’s swipe,
claws extended for maximum purchase,
or like the grand entrance to a public domain,
a sculpture garden, a place of prayer,
the bones domed as fingers, exquisite,
swirling with bits of cosmic gravel and soot.

7
Another day.
She’s finally gone, delivered into the dump truck
just before I crest the hill.
I see the man throw a shovel into the back,
then climb in the passenger’s side.
I slow down to let them enter the lane,
I want them to go first, I want to follow.
Good workers, they’ve left nothing to imagination,
only this knowledge:
behind that swinging gate, now latched,
a skeleton un-enamored of flesh
emits what’s left of the sun
a faint heat, for sure,
almost enough to see, rising.

copyright 2006 Jane Olmsted
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