Grandmother, Porcupine, Traffic

Grandmother, Porcupine, Traffic

When Big Mom saw porcupine
dead in the middle of any road
she ordered the car stopped.

Big Mom stopped
traffic as she stepped in the road
and dragged the old porcupine

from the pavement. The crushed porcupine
thick with quills, but that never stopped
Big Mom. Beside the road

she pulled quills from its skin. The road
filled with slowed cars. The porcupine
full of blood, stopped

and cold. Big Mom never stopped
long enough to notice the road
had ceased to be road. The porcupine

would always be porcupine
no matter that its heart had stopped.
Its sharp quills were more useful than a road.

I never stepped in the road
with Big Mom and porcupine.
To this day, I have neither stopped

nor slowed my life, never stopped
to pull porcupine from the road
because I loved procupine.

Big Mom loved porcupine
even as she grew too old to have the car stopped
and cried as she left porcupine alone on the road.


Sherman Alexie..........from The Summer of Black Widows