The Day of the Dead

The end of October brings
roadkill to the highways.
All varieties of small,
unfortunate animals
litter the shoulders between
Pennsylvania and Delaware,
as if part of the fall foliage
display — foxes, dogs,
raccoons, fuzzy house cats
splayed out like serial victims,
collective suicides telling of
lost volition.
They must have never learned
how to get across — even
in the night the twin disembodied
lights come at inhuman
speeds like in a strange
dream of trains.
The birds I once thought
were hawks become crows
that peck and flutter,
ashamedly, at their appetite
for carnage.

Devotion

Mechanisms for coping,
counting
sitting with hands splayed,
we keep the throat from
bursting into
tide
and whatever else we call
how we want everything
including what we last
were forced to discard.

Plainly the birds hover
like a fleet of darts
and the grey sky bears down
against the stretch of highway
in palm to palm attrition —

In the dream I am talking
to someone who will phone
in real life,
three days later.
Other, similar ways of projection,
a mirror
someone to cast the line to
someone to swallow tackle and
conversations bright with rust,
entire beds the length of canals,
someone, in the end,
will not say why they chose this
over birds or another kind
of conceit