ROAD KILL MAKES GOOD BRUSHES

Coyote always grins, even dead, 
eyes hollowed out, lips pulled back.
The beetles are happy too,
and the maggots, working from the inside out.
We were too late to skin a decent winter pelt,
but not too late to give thanks
as my blade worked its way
between the soft vertebrae at the base
of the bushy black-tipped tail.

Walking back across the prairie
we found a strip of sinew
that bound a row of shafts,
long and brown and white-tipped,
a hawk wing that won't sing wind any more.
But death is useful.
I will use the wing to fan sage smoke
and teach feathers a new song.

"Road kill makes good brushes" you say.
I never thought of it that way, but I can see it.
The long low light of morning
cuts through the clear canyon air and
explodes purple on humps of Tecovas shale.
You teach coyote tail to talk the language of light.
In your fingers the black tips
bleed pigments into the fibers.
The paper barks. The colors howl.

Your hands are skunk and coyote tails.
They sign and sweep the air 
with fistfuls of coon and badger hair.
They draw light from the sky,
squeeze color from the rocks,
resurrect life from road kill parts
and translate beauty from death.

Coyote grins, tailless.
Lost in blue canyons of eyes,
lost in lips the color of Permian clay,
lost in the hawk wing laugh,
road killed and ready to be reborn
as a watercolor, loved to life
beneath the touch of tail
to paint and paper.


© 2000 by Richard W. Todd

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