Another's Story
by Ann E. Michael
The man drove through an icy rain at dusk
as a doe bounded down a wooded slope--
you can guess.
He saw her ahead, shadow-blur, her error was to stop, briefly,
to assess.
His right foot on the brake. He sensed the vehicle’s rear slide on
slick pavement where the road’s shoulder is narrow;
the car just grazed her and she was flung up, out,
landing in the path of traffic.
Imagine his thoughts, his own fears tamped by fear for others.
Pulling the struck deer off the road he felt stunned
life in her, he could not abandon the animal.
Stayed, in the rain, with his hands on her, feeling for injury.
The bristly coat, the burrs and thorns stuck in dense fur
swollen ticks matted dirt.
Breath.
Darkness. The terrible speed of passing cars.
She lifted her head, strange how those eyes, the blackness of them
gleamed
she pulled her legs together like a carjack and sprang up, away.
The incident weighed on his mind for days
a kind of pain, a kind of promise
but that is his story to tell.
The man drove through an icy rain at dusk
as a doe bounded down a wooded slope--
you can guess.
He saw her ahead, shadow-blur, her error was to stop, briefly,
to assess.
His right foot on the brake. He sensed the vehicle’s rear slide on
slick pavement where the road’s shoulder is narrow;
the car just grazed her and she was flung up, out,
landing in the path of traffic.
Imagine his thoughts, his own fears tamped by fear for others.
Pulling the struck deer off the road he felt stunned
life in her, he could not abandon the animal.
Stayed, in the rain, with his hands on her, feeling for injury.
The bristly coat, the burrs and thorns stuck in dense fur
swollen ticks matted dirt.
Breath.
Darkness. The terrible speed of passing cars.
She lifted her head, strange how those eyes, the blackness of them
gleamed
she pulled her legs together like a carjack and sprang up, away.
The incident weighed on his mind for days
a kind of pain, a kind of promise
but that is his story to tell.