Jahrzeit Elegy: The Deer

One year to the bleak day she died was a day I couldn’t slow down: my breath bucketing like a stampede of bison, banging heart the pound of hooves. Headed with all speed for the highway with a migraine aurora,

I saw a white-tailed deer trapped on a curve of bushy ground, caught beneath the overpass’s roar on a circle of grass, round

and enough to feed a herbivore for how long? Long enough for her to dart back and around, charismatic megafauna fenced in small by the whine of cars all beetling out in a blur as the living do. What’s the sound of leaping in an open air

prison? What’s the sound of driving by: going on, not arriving?