Senseless

Yesterday, while I was driving through the snowbound landscape near Bondurant, Wyoming, a small, nameless songbird launched from the exposed grass alongside the highway and flung itself into an oncoming truck.  A splash of feathers greeted the bird at the truck’s bumper.  Instantly dead, the small bird glanced off the truck’s bumper and tumbled into my lane.  The bird vanished under my car as I shot past the truck going the opposite direction.

The death of the bird bothered me immensely.

I thought about the bird as I drove over the next mountain pass and wound through the next wide valley.  I thought about the bird when I arrived home many hours later.

I know such senseless accidents occur all around me every day.

Just another small bird.

But senseless is senseless—it weighs the same always and never fits in my pocket.

--Mitchell Hegman