Road Kill Poems!!!
“The Black Snake”
by Mary Oliver
1979
When the black snake
flashed onto the morning road,
and the truck could not swerve-death, that is how it happens.
Now he lies looped and useless
as an old bicycle tire.
I stop the car
and carry him into the bushes.
He is as cool and gleaming
as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet
as a dead brother.
I leave him under the leaves
and drive on, thinking
about death: its suddenness,
its terrible weight,
its certain coming. Yet under
reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones
have always preferred.
It is the story of endless good fortune.
It says to oblivion: not me!
It is the light at the center of every cell.
It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward
happily all spring through the green leaves before
he came to the road.
Although Mary Oliver has earned a reputation as a nature poet, her work extends
beyond simple descriptions of natural beauty to venture into larger philosophical
questions about life.
In “The Black Snake,” she explores the connections between the creatures of the
natural world and humans. Write an essay in which you analyze how Oliver uses
figurative language and poetic devices to convey the speaker’s reaction to death.
“The Mower”
by Philip Larkin
2001
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
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“The Death of a Toad”
by Richard Wilbur
1950
A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped off a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.
The rare original heartsbleed goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,
Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia’s emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn,
The haggard daylight steer.
1997 Poetry Analysis Poem: “The Death of a Toad” (Richard Wilbur)
Prompt: Read the following poem carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain how
formal elements such as structure, syntax, diction, and imagery reveal the speaker’s response to the
death of a toad.
Note From the AP College Board
In 1997, Richard Wilbur's poem "The Death of a Toad" appeared on the Advanced Placement English Literature Exam.
At that time, an AP teacher named Penny wrote to him about the poem, and he responded with a long, detailed letter
about the writing of the poem. The teacher was so delighted that she shared it on the AP English Electronic Discussion
Group. For some time now, the letter has made sporadic appearances on the Electronic Discussion Group and is always
a great hit.
We're delighted to announce that Richard Wilbur has given us permission to post his letter on AP Central. We hope
that you will use it to enhance your own reading and that you will share it with your students. You will find the full text
of the letter below.
We extend a special thank you to Richard Wilbur for his generosity.
Letter From Richard Wilbur
Dear Penny,
through
theme
Dark
I don't get letters like yours every day, and“Traveling
I wish I did.
It makes
pleasantly dizzy to think of being read by 170,000
teachers for a week. In the long history of exposure,
it beats
even Gypsy Rose Lee.
by William
E. Stafford
1998
Let me see what I can remember about the poem's inception. The poem was first published in Poetry (Chicago) in
February of 1948, and that means Traveling
that it wasthrough
written during
theI found
lawn-mowing
the dark
a deer months of 1947. We (Charlee and I and
our daughter Ellen) were then living
in Cambridge,
I, having
earned
MA at Harvard, was about to begin a threedead
on the edgeand
of the
Wilson
Riveranroad.
year Junior Fellowship there. At some
time
during
the
summer,
Charlee's
cousins,
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: the Tapleys, who lived in Wellesley
Hills, invited us to look afterthat
theirroad
house
and grounds
while they
offmore
on a vacation
is narrow;
to swerve
mightwent
make
dead. jaunt. We were happy to get
out of the city, and the house was far bigger and airier than our Plympton Street apartment, and so the sojourn in
Wellesley Hills was agreeable to us, even though we felt somewhat oppressed by what we perceived as the tepid
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
gentility of the town.
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
Most of my poems are made out of accumulated thoughts and feelings and perceptions, and almost never does it
I
dragged
her off; she was large in the belly.
happen that I have an experience and then go straight to a chair and write about it. But that's how it happened with
"The Death of a Toad." Mowing the Tapley's suburban lawn one day, I mortally injured a toad, and before the day was
My fingers
touching
her side
brought
the reason-out I had made that into a poem.
Why did
that occur?
I think
it was me
because
I was young, and just out of military
her
side
was
warm;
her
fawn
lay
there
waiting,
service, and spoiling to live, and felt, as I said before, oppressed by the safe,
somnolent retirement-village atmosphere
alive, still,with
never
be born.
of Wellesley Hills; part of me identified, therefore,
theto
toad,
and made me see the toad as representing the primal
Beside
mountain
I hesitated.
energies of the Earth, afflicted by the
sprawlthat
of our
human road
dominion.
The car
its lowered
parking
lights;
The first two lines of the third stanza
areaimed
out toahead
associate
to toad with
those
"primal energies" -- and of course there is
under
the
hood
purred
the
steady
engine.
biological ground for doing so. The words are out to magnify the toad and at the same time to be disarming about that
-- to acknowledge by an undertone
thatofI am
a great deal
of a red;
very small creature. My tonal
I stoodof
inhumor
the glare
the making
warm exhaust
turning
ambiguity has worked for some
readers
did Inot
work,
as Ithe
recall,
for Randall
Jarrell.
around
ourbut
group
could
hear
wilderness
listen.
The poem has an ad hoc stanza form,
created
byfor
theus
way
the phrasing
wanted to happen. It's scannable as a "loose
I thought
hard
all--my
only swerving--,
iambic" poem in the metrical pattern
465543.
I
think
that
in
'47
I
was
beginning
then pushed her over the edge into the river. to enjoy incorporating the six-foot line
in some of my made-up stanzas; later I did so in a poem called "Beasts." The six-footer being very often a slow and
awkward
measure, it's a challenge to use it effectively, and in support of one's meaning.
*********************************************************************************
Whether my toad actually took refuge under a cineraria or not, I can't say; but it had the right shape and shade of leaf
for my poem. I recall, for some reason, that the first stanza originally ended "in a dim,/ Low, and an ultimate glade."
That sounded too good to me, and I knew why when I remembered Poe's description of Dream-Land as "an ultimate
dim Thule." In the first lines of the poem I imagined the declining sun as moving -- so setting suns may appear to do -along the horizon, and that's what led me to use the verb "steer," which has given trouble to a number of my readers.
Quite reasonably, some have seen in that word not a verb meaning "to pursue a course" but a noun meaning "a
castrated animal." It's led me to consider, more than once, replacing "steer" with "veer."
Does that give you what you were after? Thank you for the news of Barbara and of the tearing-up of our lane in Key
West, and our very best wishes to you,
Dick
“The Groundhog”
by Richard Eberhart
In June, amid the golden fields,
I saw a groundhog lying dead.
Dead lay he; my senses shook,
And mind outshot our naked frailty.
There lowly in the vigorous summer
His form began its senseless change,
And made my senses waver dim
Seeing nature ferocious in him.
Inspecting close maggots' might
And seething cauldron of his being,
Half with loathing, half with a strange love,
I poked him with an angry stick.
And so I left; and I returned
In Autumn strict of eye, to see
The sap gone out of the groundhog,
But the bony sodden hulk remained
But the year had lost its meaning,
And in intellectual chains
I lost both love and loathing,
Mured up in the wall of wisdom.
Another summer took the fields again
Massive and burning, full of life,
But when I chanced upon the spot
There was only a little hair left,
The fever arose, became a flame
And Vigour circumscribed the skies,
Immense energy in the sun,
And through my frame a sunless trembling.
And bones bleaching in the sunlight
Beautiful as architecture;
I watched them like a geometer,
And cut a walking stick from a birch.
My stick had done nor good nor harm.
Then stood I silent in the day
Watching the object, as before;
And kept my reverence for knowledge
It has been three years, now.
There is no sign of the groundhog.
I stood there in the whirling summer,
My hand capped a withered heart,
Trying for control, to be still,
To quell the passion of the blood;
Until I had bent down on my knees
Praying for joy in the sight of decay.
And thought of China and of Greece,
Of Alexander in his tent;
Of Montaigne in his tower,
Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.
1982 AP Poetry Analysis Poem: “The Groundhog” (Richard Eberhart)
Prompt: Write an essay in which you analyze how the language of the poem reflects the changing
perceptions and emotions of the speaker as he considers the metamorphosis of the dead
groundhog. Develop your essay with specific references to the text of the poem.
In the next three poems a road-killed deer is described. Read the poems carefully, then write
an essay in which you analyze how each of the poets uses word choice, figurative language and
tone to describe the relationship of the speaker to the deer.
“Traveling through the Dark”
by William E. Stafford
1998
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
“Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho”
by Robert Wrigley
2001
The doe, at a dead run, was dead
the instant the truck hit her.
In the headlights I saw her tongue
extend and her eyes go shocked and vacant.
Launched at a sudden right angle—say
from twenty miles per hour south to fifty
miles per hour east—she skated
many yards on the slightest toe-edge tips
of her dainty deer hooves, then fell
slowly, inside the speed of her new trajectory,
not pole-axed but stunned, away
from me and the truck's decelerating pitch.
She skidded along the right lane's
fog line true as a cue ball,
until her neck caught a signpost
that spun her across both lanes and out of sight
beyond the edge. For which, I admit, I was grateful,
the road there being dark, narrow, and shoulderless,
and home, with its lights, not far away.
“Roadkill”
by Dan Brown
2012
Stood on a pier,
lamenting the deer,
that stood too long in the lights.
That delicate doe,
that I loved so,
she visits me through these nights.
I rise to my feet
and feel her heart beat,
through a coat of silky brown.
Despite her eyes and pitiful cries I'm glad I ran her down.