Elizabeth Roy - The Dead by the Side of the Road

Besides The Bath, another Gary Snyder poem that affected me was “The Dead by the Side of the Road.” I definitely wouldn’t say I liked it, but it was powerful. For me, seeing roadkill is always heartbreaking and appalling. I drive a lot, but no matter how many times I see it, the sight of roadkill makes me cringe or even makes me nauseous. It’s not really the gore – I took a vertebrate anatomy class that was entirely dissection and was fine. It’s more how unfair and wrong it seems. We move in, take land from the animals, kill them, and then run them over repeatedly until they’re mush. It’s completely repellent to me. It’s especially painful to see hawks and other birds – I’m an avid birdwatcher and I feel a strong connection to hawks in particular. A hawk is the first animal that Snyder writes about in the poem. The poem has an interesting twist – instead of just being about animals dead by the side of the road, it’s about utilizing their bodies for food or tools, and turning something horrific into a gift that requires thanks. I don’t really know how I feel about this; I’m not sure I could do it, personally, but I suppose it’s in keeping with my values and beliefs. However, this might be where my ingrained societal norms about food and sanitation have a stronger hold than my beliefs about not wasting!