Thanks, Millicent. I hadn't considered family pets. Maybe there are not as many human road deaths as I surmised.
It's the rapid withering that gets to me. And the openness, I suppose. Some sort of naked need to declare, out there by the road where all rushes by, that some will never rush again.
Bill
> On 11 Feb 2015, at 7:50 am, Millicent Borges Accardi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> I like this one Bill-- especially
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> "But such bouquets fall mourn-short."
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> "Emblems continue to accumulate
> at the site of last breath, of sudden
> rupture. There's a reaching in these
> jumbled cairns."
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> In the canyon where I live, there are many road "offerings," where a family pet was killed, pedestrians, bicyclists. What happens in Topanga is, after a time, the flowers and candles disappear but eerie white crosses remain, dotting the windy mountain road. Most unmarked.
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> Millicent
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> Kale Soup for the Soul
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> http://www.MillicentBorgesAccardi.com
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> @TopangaHippie on Twitter
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> Água mole em pedra dura tanto dá até que fura
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
> To: POETRYETC <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tue, Feb 10, 2015 12:44 pm
> Subject: On the Road
>
>
> Who loads these offerings
> by roadside death spots?
> Not relatives surely; friends,
> you assume, who have already
> placed flowers on the coffin, in
> chapel, at graveside or urn wall.
>
> But such bouquets fall mourn-short.
> A soul interrupted en route seems now
> to require temporal marking. See those
> propped white crosses tilting, golden
> framed pictures catching the sun's glint,
> printed pages flapping in car-breeze,
>
> oversized stuffed toys nuzzling CDs,
> in loose piles, footy scarves, trophies.
> Emblems continue to accumulate
> at the site of last breath, of sudden
> rupture. There's a reaching in these
> jumbled cairns. Institutions can't cut it.
>
> Even when colours fade, animals
> desecrate, the vacuum remains.
> Not just the absence of the departed,
> but some gapingness the dead
> leave in all of the rest of us,
> for whom the road winds on.
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