The road is streaked with the skid of tires veering this way and that through the slime. A corpse of ashen snow lies coruscating in the ditch. Gray puddles reflect the gray spring sky, like columns of obituaries in a weekly newspaper's March editions. You think this ragged road will never be repaired, but the township grader passes through that afternoon and makes its way straight again. Arrayed on every loop of telephone line the dozen grackles screech their screech.
Every grackle faces east, like beads on an abacus.
On a rosary. All winter you doubted. Today now, as you stand by the mailbox, a letter in your hand, you see something, a sign, pressed into the mud at your feet. You kneel there, in the glistening clay, and with the tips of two fingers you enter the print of the improbable deer.