National Park

We saw a lot more of them dead than alive the living diffident by the side of the road as the far-off mountains flanked and intoxicated the speedometer into saunter The dead were interspersed on the asphalt their poor vision uncorrected by their auditory keenness like a blind spot in a poet and their fender-mangled corpses were occasionally ripped in two before vultures reached them In our rental van we left no mother bereft and orphaned no piglets Turkey buzzards and American vultures were the javelinas’ gift to us red and black scavengers that perched on ranchland fences the full span of highway they’d circle above in diminishing downward spirals or flinch at each other’s puffs and swells or away from incoming vehicles Still they shared the dead among them as we sometimes share our dead when we love our dead Javelina the Arabic word for mountain in its root and then the mountain coming closer to an ear became a spear