The Suburban Frontier

Driving along the same
damn way as the day before
and the day before that, I slip
my eyes off the road onto
my watch –
ten minutes late
to a place I’d rather avoid, and
I don’t see the reckless doe
with her line of fawns leap
across the road with a pioneer
spirit, as if it was
the Oregon trail and not
Orchard View Estates
through which they plunged
with such unbridled urgency.
 
I don’t see them until they freeze
two car lengths away from
the bumper, silhouetted
by moonlight, have to
swerve and steer the car
nose first into a ditch. I slam
into the still silence of the night and
soon the hood steams and the tires
spin and the driver’s side door
refuses to open.
 
Startled at first, the deer move on
without pausing to observe
this steel box that squeezes
me tight with its seatbelt,
as if they know too that
nobody would really notice
if there were one less deer
in the brush, one less car
on the road, one less person
on the earth.