30. HIGHWAY PILE UP
the sheep became an old fleece mat spread across the bitumen, a kangaroo got hit, a fox and cat were dead next to it, because they had come in to feed, to clean up the carcass after the truck had cleaned it up, a pair of crows and a wedgetail and a snake were also dead, the giant weathered wings of the eagle folded in ceremony, the talons were just a mess, the cat looked almost cute, asleep and in need of some tinned flesh to revive and substainiate, not horrific or cranky in death, like the look most run over cats, like the nobody loves them look, there was a pregnant vixen, she was a gorgeous deep pink red like the sand, her death and the death of her unborn was one for the greenies, one for the sick and dying lambs, the kangaroo had been dead for awhile, flies lifted off her in blanket layers, her eyes murky, old bottle glass, with crystals rising to the top, to cloud the vision, like the outback will always chose to do, to maintain its remoteness like my own mind dragging me inwards like i'm solidifying crystals the shapes of preconsciousness like salt lakes along the midday heat of the stuart highway, i didn't bother putting on my plastic gloves and checking her pouch for a joey, i didn't want to reach in and find it dead and cold in there, as its mother's teat and fur had begun to chill around it, its first fears gripping to a life cut short, its fate to go back into the universal it had so recently come from, in a few weeks from now all the wasted lives of these animals will disintegrate off the road, they will roll and be blown back into the deep red dunes, there are pockets of regular dead along the outback highways, to be eventually blown inland, to feed the dreams of rocks and boulders, the vast carpets of wildflowers |
