ON DRIVING PAST
THE 100,000th ROADKILL


These animals who sleep by the road:
One day they will all wake up
Rise up and take back the roads.
The fish flushed in turbines will
Run up the rubble of dams coming down;
New feathers will grow through thick black death
And a million white birds will take back the air.

And seeing that happen, some more complex
And beautiful thing may even emerge from us:
Something capable of sitting still,
Of inviting the now unimaginable emptying of mind
For the prowlthrough and indwell of the whole ray of life,
The inflight and upwheel of those millions of birds
Sweeping us up into what could be: this could be.

— George Sibley 2005 ©