A Poem Entitled “Road Kill”
Road Kill
argh)
(cows wag their tails
in time with Peter Gabriels’s
“Games Without Frontiers”
And I begin to wonder
if I’m feeling really good
or lost touch with something
like ‘consensus reality’
whatever that is…)
(I drive for a living
deliver newspapers
on a two hundred and fifty mile loop
through inflatable water slide rural finger lakes new york
and the stereo keeps me grounded
reminds me I haven’t really
left the Earth of my childhood
behind)
There’s a woodchuck
he’s been sitting every day
for the past week
beside the body
of his friend
(or lustling?)
‘Smack dab in the middle of the road’
‘Possums die so ugly
every one of them
looks like it’d been dragged for miles
then tortured hideously for hours
but woodchucks look so peaceful
<like they’re sure they’ll be
re-united
with their splattered friends
and lovers>’
sometimes
I guess I’d rather
be a woodchuck
sitting in the road
hoping an eighteen-wheeler
does it right the first time
[ instantaneously ]
(I think there just might be a conspiracy
to cover all of new york state’s roads
in fur-
but, like most bureaucracies
‘they’ can’t agree on a time table
so by the time they add a third pelt
the first and second have blown away
Jim Wellington
June 21, 1989