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,
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.
Autumn air coming in
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 waddling life
with mine.
Dean
Metcalf
©November
2, 2007
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