Where Grass Gives Way to Gravel

by Jill McCabe Johnson

Simon Ray

The doe lies where grass gives way to gravel and gravel gives way to road. A spot of fur on the side of her ribcage and another near her shoulder splays like a cowlick or bullseye. The half-inch opening of her mouth reveals a row of tiny incisors along her lower jaw and a gap where at least two teeth are missing. Both ears fan open, no longer twitching to track sounds. Inside her right ear what at first appears to be a tiny brown mouse turns out to be one of the bracts from a Douglas fir cone whose outline resembles the body, paws, nose, and tail of a mouse. The deer has fallen at the base of a Douglas fir tree, and the bract has fallen into her ear. It’s not hard to imagine a Douglas squirrel in the branches tearing cones apart to get to the tender seeds, oblivious to the body below. What strikes me most about this Columbian black-tailed deer is not her stillness nor even her presence in this neighborhood of single-family homes. Deer have grazed in our yard for all the years we’ve lived here. No, what catches my attention in a way I know will haunt me is the doe’s eye. She has been dead long enough for her fur to lose its luster, for rain to have separated the strands along her face and neck into clumps and ditches, and for our dog to sniff a trace of her long before he’s within line of sight. But her eye is blue-black, a sunken pool of lifelessness. A simmer of gaunt. A tar pit of gone. Soon enough, ravens, turkey vultures, and even the feral mink will find her. A mated pair of bald eagles who perch at the top of one of the firs in our yard might chase off the other animals and claim the doe meat for themselves. Neighborhood dogs will drag what’s left of her body into the woods. Some will bury the bones. Dermestids and other carrion insects will break down what’s left of skin and fur. And a spring wind will scatter her scent amid cedar and honeysuckle, nodding onion and Nootka rose.

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Jill McCabe Johnson is the author of three poetry books, two chapbooks, and editor of three anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection, Tangled in Vow & Beseech (MoonPath, 2024), was named a finalist for the Sally Albiso Poetry Award and Michigan State University’s Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Recent works have appeared in Slate, Fourth Genre, Superstition Review, The Brooklyn Review, Gulf Stream, Brevity, and Diode. Jill is editor-in-chief of Wandering Aengus Press and its imprint, Trail to Table Press. She spends her free time writing, hiking, and in close observation of the natural world. https://jillmccabejohnson.com