roadkill / the third way

roadkill

the bright red blood from the roadkill on the parkway is brighter than a christmas tree. it was a deer, and its sprawling, limp, dead legs reach toward god. i accidentally run it over again. i’ve wondered who cleans up roadkill since i was a child. it is someone’s job to drag it back into the woods. i wonder if whoever does that job sees dead deer as they try to fall asleep that night. i know i do.

i saw a work of art depicting roadkill at a museum in montreal. i can’t remember if it was a photograph or a painting. as i drive, i switch my memory back and forth at will, and choose to see it as both.

there is a paradoxical tendency of deer to freeze in place when they desperately need to run for their lives. “like a deer in the headlights,” we say. most people think of this moment as one of fear or bewilderment, the deer being so shocked they are unable to respond. i think that perhaps the deer feel something different in this moment, perhaps frozen with wonder at something so foriegn and manmade. perhaps they are intoxicated by the driver of a car, so full of the control they have never known.

i used to love to drive becasue i too thought of myself in complete control. but i know now that i don’t control the falling rocks from the delaware river gap. and i don’t control how many dead deer i count on the road as i drive by.

and then i remember that i also don’t control how many are spared either. i don’t control how many run free again though the meadows, so thankful for another day of survival. i can only take photographs of them to save for later, and marvel at their beauty when i get home.

the third way

in life, there are those of us who have the will to persevere, and those of us who do not. that is to say, there is no third way in life. and in death, there is burial, or there is cremation. both are unpleasant, so we look for some other way. no such luck. as in life, there is no third way in death. but if you are cremated, and your ashes are spread in a river, you will end up in the ocean, with everyone else. so if we choose, we will all flow together. together to the sea in that miracle of a river.