Punctuation Marks

It might be better if they weren’t
All crosses, nor all standardized,
But if some kind of marker were

Obligatory at all sites
Of fatalities by the road.
Let mourning be extravagant

Whenever and for whatever
Reason it feels it needs to be.
Don’t let it be unrecognized,

Unrecorded, invisible.
You should want to count every curve,
Every deadly intersection,

And credit each with exactly
As many deaths as pile up there.
In a better world, the roadkill

Of pets, of feral animals,
And the various synanthropes
Massacred would be included,

But only a Borgesian
Mapmaker could keep track of that.
We’ll settle for an accurate

Tally of human roadside deaths,
Each memorialized as close
As can to the spot where breath stopped.

Now drive through that land. Ride that bus.
Bicycle past the wicked turns
That threaten you, too, if you must.

We have plentiful ghosts. We need
More haunting us. We need to know
Names and dates, so they can haunt us.