The highway's edge of unmalicious deaths plays counterpoint against the radio's theme. In Utah and Nevada, rabbits' white fur sloughs off the pavement like the nap of cheap velvet while I am told Bob Marley's head is pillowed by his dreadlocks' tightly harrowed rows. Great white pillars of plain bereft of roof - the columns of grain elevators shade an owl which, blood glued to the pavement, waves one wing to passing cars containing the report, indifferent as the trapped fly's buzzing voice, that the Pope's been shot while blessing multitudes. I did not take personally the legs of a Pennsylvania deer that, stiff as fence posts, staked out the belly pregnant with death's gases until, my radio off and parked in Brooklyn, a neighbor leaned into the car to announce my father's death, and I thought perhaps if I'd turned it off before I might have heard. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VARIATIONS: 15 by CONRAD AIKEN IN THE TRENCHES by RICHARD ALDINGTON POOR DEVIL! by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET IF IT WERE NOT FOR YOU by HAYDEN CARRUTH JOHNNY SPAIN'S WHITE HEIFER by HAYDEN CARRUTH SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: DOW BRITT by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |