Road Kill
If there is a perfect month,
October’s the one:
driving north on Highway 82 from Joseph
colors cascade from the asphalt westward -
orange and red undulation of leaves on the brush
in the roadside ditch,
cottonwoods just beyond, in a row of
sturdy whispering sentinels, leaves deciding
between green and gold.
Behind them a mown field of straw
the
color of straw.
Beyond that field, the violent thrust of mount Joseph’s
big shoulders, his coat of dark blue-green fir and spruce
punctuated, all the way to the snowy ridge,
by lemon-yellow spires
of
tamarack.
The autumn air coming through the pickup window
is a continuous kiss.
Just north of McLaran Lane, a skunk has been killed
along
the center line.
It is a beautiful skunk, a large one, still intact
except for the crushed head. Its two broad stripes
glisten white against the glistening obsidian
of the rest of the body.
I drive this road every day, so witness, over the following
week,
the incremental crushing
and
reddening
and
flattening
and,
finally, the reduction to a stain on the highway
of what was lately a breathing, waddling
life.
Is there a crime
named for this – this hurrying past a life
recently ended
– some juridical or
linguistic cousin of negligent homicide?
For the next five days, I anticipate
approaching the spot, holding my breath, then
inhale, as long and as deeply as I can, the cloud of
pungent skunk molecules, that I may carry forward, beyond
that skunk’s death, some part of its sweet life
with mine.
©Dean
Metcalf
November
2, 2007
