I drove east on a two-lane rural road and listened to sports talk radio.<\/p>\n
Rain fell.<\/p>\n
Ahead of me, in the oncoming lane, I saw a duck leading her chicks across the road. The mother had waddled into the shoulder. I counted seven chicks and marveled. They were incredibly small, mere cake decorations.<\/p>\n
A second later, a colossal black truck drove through the chicks. Five were smashed, two left writhing. I swerved a bit when I saw it.<\/p>\n
I slowed down and passed the carnage. I thought about stopping\u2014but why? I couldn’t stop. A vehicle tailgated me and there was nowhere to pull over. I thought about William Stafford’s Oregon poem of a dead deer on a rural highway, \u201cTraveling Through the Dark.\u201d I began crying, and then verged on sobbing. Then I sobbed. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve sobbed in my life. Until now, never while driving a car.<\/p>\n
Metaphors attacked my mind like a contagion. I couldn’t fight them. I turned off the radio.<\/p>\n
What had been left back there? Was I the writhing ones?<\/p>\n
There was no Barry Lopez to come along and carry the roadkill off the road to dignity and offer an apology for humanity. I doubt he ever did that. Writers always lie for the literary effect.<\/p>\n
I’ve lived 54 years and this was the worst thing I’d ever witnessed. Perhaps that makes me lucky when it comes to this world.<\/p>\n\n
I drove east on a two-lane rural road and listened to sports talk radio. Rain fell. Ahead of me, in the oncoming lane, I saw a duck leading her chicks across the road. The mother had waddled into the shoulder. I counted seven chicks and marveled. They were incredibly small, mere cake decorations. A second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[796,799,793,6,52,797,452,798,795,794],"class_list":["post-4052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-barry-lopez","tag-crying","tag-ducks","tag-matt-love","tag-oregon","tag-roadkill","tag-rural-oregon","tag-rural-road","tag-traveling-through-the-dark","tag-william-stafford","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4054,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions\/4054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}