The Cabinetmaker's Window: Poems

Driving Around

32 Driving Around For two years he lasted picking up the bodies of deer blasted into pieces on the roadside raccoons, possums, cats, an occasional vulture or goose, birds more fleet having air to rise into. Mostly it was earthbound ones filled with worms, bug-eyed, the carcass moving with the force of what is hungry inside never minding him too much hoisting everything up into the bed of the truck. He lasted two years. A white dog unharmed it seemed sleeping still by the roadside undid him. Lifting its body lolling and still warm he placed it on the seat beside him as he drove home trailing the stink of his work through town and buried the animal in his front yard, three quartz stones as big as skulls to mark the place. Look, we just passed it. Let me back up. No I didn’t say dog. It was a boy. Neighbors saw him bury him in the plain of day. Neighbors saw the cops and what they say is he killed the boy and buried him and came loose with a hatchet at the law. I don’t know. You could hear the blam-blam-blam a mile away. My brother loved his wife and his boy, both. There are many things that are never ok. Most. Don’t ever tell me anything is ok. Don’t ever tell me nothing. You can get out here and walk. ...