By Lisa Huddleston

 

In a world where dead toddlers wash onto uncaring shores

Where men brag about their power to take a woman’s body

Where unborn children are discarded as so much refuse

And treaties mean nothing when oil is the goal

 

Why does road kill still make me cry?

 

Stiff possums and skunks and misplaced cats and dogs

Once fluffy and soft but now dirtied by death and hard

Buzzards feast and flop away when my car drives near

No road kill in their kind

They are the eaters, the takers, the clumsy clearer-away-ers

 

The woods are raped of ancient trees

The fields are bush-hogged and rolled

Subdivisions are named Rolling Hills or Deer Trace

But all that is left is just a trace

 

And now we fight the black snake

Striving to keep it in the ground

To protect the great waters of the river

“Water is Life” for today as well as for tomorrow

 

Oil can’t be drunk

Oil can’t be eaten

Oil can’t make the grasses or the vegetables grow

But oil can kill the water

 

Everything once had its place, and it was very good

Fish in the rivers

Deer in the woods

Buffalo on the plains

Snakes in the grass and under the ground

 

And the road kill multiplies as we do

Feeding the vultures of the world

Coaxing the water of life from my eyes

To let me know I am not numb

I am not dead

Water is Life