Take care driving over The Gap.
Emboldened by night, deer emerge
from the grim wood to graze the verge
between the black trees and blacktop.
A mountain tableau, they stand there
cropping at the monochrome grass
while half-past midnight headlights pass
along their grey flanks and the flare
of their signalling scuts, upturned.
Occasionally one will lift
its bright reflector eyes, then shift
position, dull, unconcerned.
But always there’s the risk a doe
might simply turn herself about
then skip into the fast road, out
to a god-awful roaring blow.
The big ones could take you with them,
bouncing heavily on the hood,
thick body, hooves and bursting blood,
chaotic through your shattered screen.
We know it’s not intentional.
Animals mostly stay life’s course,
persistent till some foreign force
stops them. They’re not suicidal.
Fabled lemmings don’t rush the cliff
with some grand plan to end it all.
Their goal is not the fatal fall;
they have no conscious wish for death.
Even the mother octopus
who, having laid her only clutch,
stubbornly refuses to touch
all food and fades without a fuss,
isn’t thinking of the black hole
of permanence. We alone heft
that burden – other beasts are deaf
to the existential tolling
of the bell numbering our hours.
“The unexamined life…” Go say
that to the thought-free cervidae
living each day as it occurs,
until a late night heavy load
determines otherwise. Pity
the broken driver too, as he
bleeds his remainder on the road.
What good would examination –
Socratic study – have done him?
If he hadn’t, on a whim,
glanced away to change the station.
