The dead ones, roadside, lie flattened and smeared in this on-the-move season.

One I pass does not stink in the morning but then does in the afternoon.

One curls as if sleeping.

One day last week when I was again awake in the dark after a dream as forgettable as light, one must have shuffled past my window.

Its scent stung and faded.

I must have slept.

We had a dog when I was a boy who never learned to recoil from them, and was more than once sprayed and then sprayed again before wanting to be let in.

How, my ancestor, does one learn avoidance of a terrible gravitation?

I watch the world change and wonder what will pass the last time I breathe in.

Will it be black and white or parts of it red?