Dead Quiet
Mar 21 2010


I have seen dead birds.
A smudge of feathers,
airy flesh
evanescent.

The body of a mouse
snow receding.
A nub of grey, freeze-dried,
a blackened tail
stiff as wire.

Most wild things do not die
of old age.
But should his time come, he knows.
A quiet place, out of sight
lying on his side
panting.
No heroic measures
no demands.

I walk through the forest,
almost never see
a dead animal, flesh scavenged
burrowed down in its private place.
There is the carcass of a deer
disembowelled,
fresh wolf scat all around.
There are the violated bodies
of road-kill,
the dull thud
the bloody skull.
But death is mostly private,
and hardly lasts.

I, too, will go far away.
Beyond the electric cities,
the glow of the last solitary porch-light
left on.
Beyond the reach of noise,
mile after mile
until only I disturb the heavy quiet —
my pounding heart
and rhythmic breathing,
my clumsy human feet.

I will lie supine
arms at my side
eyelids touching,
in the litter of leaves
wet moss, and lichen
decomposing soil,
feel the absolute quiet
the absence of light.
Never having felt
more intensely alive.



Two things coalesced to make this poem.

The first was this idea of animals dying in the wild: how you almost never see their remains; how animals are programmed to conceal pain and weakness, and so go off to die with stoic dignity, in private.

The other was the precious rarity – and luxury – of total darkness and deep silence: how far you have to travel to get away from the effects of artificial light; how noise pollution pursues us everywhere. As implied in the poem, perhaps we ultimately achieve this only when we’re eventually buried, a good 6 feet under. So seeking out untouched wilderness may be the closest approximation. I think there is something essential about this perfect solitude. It probably has to do with being utterly alone, where you have to squarely face your own truth without all the distractions of modern life.

Which is like those animals going off to die: an unprotesting acceptance, surrender, and – ultimately – a kind of peace. This is part of the great and simple nobility we envy in animals: how they give birth without pain; how they live by the pure and unintellectualized morality of survival; how they die without fear, free of the burden of knowledge.

All the images are true. The new puppy has an unerring instinct for any dead mouse under the snow. She takes them gently into her mouth and playfully tosses them around, then takes great delight rolling in them. We’ve all seen the weightless remains of birds, a few days after crashing into a picture window. There was a deer on the frozen ice last winter, killed by a pack of wolves. And many many years ago, I ran into someone’s dog who dashed out onto the unlit highway at night: I still recall with a sick queasy feeling the dull thud of his head against the bumper. (I was young, and didn’t stop. I doubt I could have done much. But it would have been the right – and humane—thing to do.)