we met teddy macker yesterday and he brought me to tears

sycamore canyon

for vaughn montgomery

The dead doe on the Pacific Coast Highway
was lying on her left side. She was almost
the same color as the dirt around her.
Whenever a car passed—it was Sunday
and people were driving the coast—
the fur on her neck would rise in the wind.
Her eyes were dry and cracked; they looked
like the skin of baked apples. They did not shine.
Her left hind leg was so broken it looked absurd.
A car must’ve hit. At contact the doe defecated.
Windblown pebbles stuck to the shit. The hooves
were dusty and large. They did not seem like the hooves
of something dead. When I reached down
and picked up a front leg I could feel the clarity
of her old running. She made me nervous.
I was afraid she would stand up and come alive.
How many cars will pass tonight, I wondered,
and make the fur on her neck rise?
It saddened me no one would be there
to document every time this happened,
that no one would say, There, look.
The fur on her neck, it’s rising in the wind.