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 Contents | March 2001 In This Issue (Contributors) |
The Atlantic Monthly | March 2001
Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho
by Robert Wrigley .....  Hear Robert Wrigley read this poem (in RealAudio)The doe, at a dead run, was dead the instant the truck hit her. In the headlights I saw her tongue extend and her eyes go shocked and vacant. Launched at a sudden right angle—say from twenty miles per hour south to fifty miles per hour east—she skated many yards on the slightest toe-edge tips of her dainty deer hooves, then fell slowly, inside the speed of her new trajectory, not pole-axed but stunned, away from me and the truck's decelerating pitch. She skidded along the right lane's fog line true as a cue ball, until her neck caught a signpost that spun her across both lanes and out of sight beyond the edge. For which, I admit, I was grateful, the road there being dark, narrow, and shoulderless, and home, with its lights, not far away. Copyright © 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; March 2001; Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho - 01.03; Volume 287, No. 3; page 66. |
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