A Seam

On the freeway today:
a hamburger-red mess of road kill
splintered and feathered
mid-lane. And on the shoulder,
one goose, head cocked
in a graceful arc,
upright and unblinking like a stiff
lawn ornament of cement and splinter.
On the edge of death
yet so violently alive
here, abutting sizzling steam of traffic
and exhaust, serene, legs
curled so carefully beneath it.

My heart hurts for a moment,
burst at the seams,
the sight slamming into me
even more fiercely than the gut-wrenching,
glass-shattering force of the twisted
metal carcasses of some car wreck
curled still in the median.

This fragile sculpture
of feather and bone
is craft unraveling,
shock uncurling
towards some heaven.
No jaw of life to undo
the way this animal's locked
itself up tight in grief, in apprehension,
staving itself for something.

* *

Years ago, one carefree, snow-globe
moment of unexpected happiness
that I recall even now to buoy me
through hard days,
like imagining another being's
heaven, a seam, a twist-tie
sectioning off this life from next:
the sky stretched out
like the legs of the newly-born,
wobbling into life,
the sun scouring the windshield
with light, elbow crooked against wind,
the music on the radio
pretending for a moment
to match the beat of seven geese
caught in the bow-pull
of a vee, spearing their way
through sky, alive,
my foot on the pedal,
eyes following them for miles.

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(c) L.S. (5/3/2004)
[Steal this and die]

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