Commuting for Treatment

The collection just keeps growing
Of Pez and people and all the things.
You don’t like this color? It matches
Your thing. You ready to go back yet?

Completely obliterated, the remains
Of a fairly large mammal, almost certainly
A deer, certainly not a human being, since
No human would be left smeared across
The road like that, long streaks of blood,
Scattered chunks, splattered entrails,
Not even after a bomb blast, maybe
In a war zone. This is not a war zone
At the moment, just a busy road. What
Was that moment like, for the deer, for
The driver of whatever, probably a truck?

It’s past. The doctor’s office is next,
The cheerful, tchotchke-mad receptionist.
Her collection just keeps growing
Of Pez and people and all the things.
You don’t like this color? It matches
Your thing. You ready to go back yet?

There’s a fat seal in the news, wallowing
Among humans and their technology,
Parked cars and orange traffic cones,
In a coastal town in Tasmania, land
Of wooded hills, natural beauty, aimless
Genocide and extinctions, pleasant
Housing where the seal humps to sprawl,
As photographed, in someone’s yard,
Green grass, green hills behind it,
A place, a place on Earth where things
Live and the collection just keeps growing.