I did not make it in time.
The rain came down in a wall
and the donning of armor takes time,
rain pants and boot and jacket
billed for fishing vessel decks
employed instead for walking white lines.
The drive is slow, water wicked away
by wipers as the car fights to hydroplane.
I went as fast as I could
and I did not make it in time.
Crouched in a downpour, I see bodies.
They’re splattered across the blacktop,
some still recognizable as the salamanders
they once were, black forms yellow spots glowing,
just trying to cross the road to continue
to live in a world we’ve carved into parcels.
Crossing guard duty is hard when the world
never decided your charges were worth protecting.
Tears are hard to see when your face
is already covered in this much water.
I keep walking. This much death defines a path taken.
A small head peers across the black chasm,
and I cradle its form in my damp wrinkled hands,
lay it softly down on the other side.
This one will survive. I put away my sorrow,
shine my headlamp against the closing dark,
in search of another small life to save.
—
Garrett Sharpe is an environmental microbiologist, hiker, naturalist, and poet from central North Carolina. Garrett’s poems showcase the plants, animals, and landscapes he loves, as well as the threats facing them in an ever more human centric world. He is a board member of the North Carolina Poetry Society, has been published in Pinesong and The Heron Clan VI, and received the Ross L. Andrews Nature Poetry Contest Chestnut Oak Award in 2020.
