Southern Legitimacy Statement : Not a dead mule, but is a dead mule deer close enough?
Shapes of Dust
Through breaks in the billowing dirt road dust,
a shape ahead appears a fallen girl,
knees bent, arm outstretched, head turned aside,
hit by a truck or tossed from a pickup bed.
The pickup I’m following blocks the view,
and then I see the shape again,
a rotting deer with spotted skin,
As I draw level with the corpse,
deer flies, momentarily unsettled by the traffic,
spiral away in a billowing cloud of dust,
undulating like dark seaweed in a turbulent fjord.
In my rear view mirror, the deer recedes
into the amorphous mass
it will eventually become
as sun and rain and flies
consume its fleeting flesh.
We are dust. To dust we shall return.
