I wrote this poem many years ago when I’d left a ten-year period of working first with people living outdoors and then with unhoused moms and kids who came to stay at our transitional housing program in New Jersey. Despite the title, I started with a more light-hearted tone, then it shocked me by pivoting to something dark. As the title implies, things die. So don’t read it if you think that will be too upsetting. (Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash)
Roadkill
New to rural Mass, I’m ill-equipped
with Jersey driving skills.
The hills here move in single lanes.
A yellow stripe defines a major road.
Toads don’t know this.
In rain they overtake narrow asphalt strips
with measured jumps or simply rest
on slick, black surface.
Here they are in headlight,
split-second before splat.
If you prefer a different sport,
chipmunks small as leaves scatter across the road.
Like a video game, they run from all sides
as you white-knuckle the steering wheel.
Roadkill is everywhere.
“The roads in cross-country practice,”
Alexis groans. “So gross.”
Flattened squirrels, cats, skunks, dogs, raccoons, coyotes.
Ducks, turkeys, goats stop traffic.
Once I saw a bull wander down the shoulder.
A colder hour north, it’s moose laid flat.
God and people let their animals roam the streets here.
#
New Jersey had its own roadkill:
By the George Street fountain, I handed old, hard-packed Harry
a ham sandwich & a white foam cup of sparse
skinny noodles sunk in yellow broth.
“I was a Golden Gloves champ, once,”
he assured me. “Almost.”
Hours later he bounced off cars under
falling snow and streetlights on Rt. 18.
“When three cars hit you, you’re dead,”
the beat cop said.
Joe P woke me at 2 a.m., the year we wanted
our home phone to be the Homeless Hotline.
He called to tell me he was fucked up.
He already had a welfare room
on that Rt. 1 stretch of strip malls gas stations cheap motels.
“Come see me in the office,” I yawned.
Instead he rolled off the hood of an ’87 Dodge
in the rain one night.
I knew Greg well. Amiable, willing
to dish out chili and rice or clean up paper plates.
From DC, he’d been with Mitch Snyder,
was not afraid as we sat-in at City Hall.
Greg cried at Jonesy’s funeral – the old man hit by a truck –
then thanked me for the eulogy the Home News published.
Who knew I’d have no words left, months later,
when a dark car scattered tuna, two six-packs,
and Greg’s head across the south-bound lane of Rt. 1.
#
I fled to New England woods to escape funerals.
Now peace is surrounded by rustling
luminescent red and gold leaves.
Not a homeless man in sight.
If I don’t look closely at the edge of the road.
