On the road today, complete with existential dust,
September unfurling her mums and pillowed hills,
I saw three dead animals: a raccoon with bloody lips
just outside his home, the cornfield, green wainscot
of the fields and sky; then, soft and sweater-grey,
crumpled with buttons, a cat curled too soon
in a driver’s haste. How hateful roads on footfall,
I thought, and just then, my tennis shoes skirted
the skin of a frog, pressed just so on its scrapbook
page of asphalt, all the insides squashed out.
When I snap my fingers against the screen
to send a stink-bug hurtling into the ageless evening,
I mourn a little for the them versus us of life, but soon
reach for a perfect peach in its kitchen basket.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 4.
Charity Gingerich is from Akron/Canton, OH, but she lived in Morgantown, WV, and taught at WVU for the past six years. Last summer found her singing with a Mennonite choral group in Poland for 3 weeks.
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