{"id":1850,"date":"2026-06-04T19:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T19:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1850"},"modified":"2026-06-11T01:25:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:25:34","slug":"mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1850","title":{"rendered":"Mate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
One blindingly bright Tucson morning, 
while riding passenger 
in my grandmother\u2019s boat of a Mercury wagon, 
she navigated us down North Oracle road. 

My eyes had been entranced on the Catalina foothills, 
where I stared up and out, 
my vision blurred by motion, 
she broke through my glaze when she cried out: 
\u201cOh no! Oh dear, dear, dear!\u201d

Her exclamation became fast tears, 
as she gestured to my window side 
and at a little Gambel\u2019s quail running back and forth
in front of the body of another quail,
this one with deeper, brighter markings, 
lain deflated, his ruddy head and ebony top knot limp 
on the scorching asphalt, 
the victim of some car\u2019s unseeing tires. 

I crane my neck backwards
to glimpse the survivor, 
tawny and muted grey, 
fretting over her partner, 
growing smaller in the distance, 
while my grandma continues: 
\u201cOh no oh no oh no! <\/em>
Quails mate for life! 
What will she do<\/em>?! 
The poor dear she\u2019s all alone!\u201d 

At that last outburst, 
Grandma bawled openly, 
an ever-ready Kleenex slipped 
from quilted cotton handbag 
and lifted to her face, 
her nose and eyes reddened, 
lines stretching across her crepey, 
anguished face. 

My Grandma felt things, deeply. 
What I\u2019m trying to say is, 
she had more empathy for a strange bird 
than most people have 
for other humans on this planet. 

She saw love and companionship 
and dedication and tragedy and loss and, 
upon taking in the visibly bereft feathered lady,
it was too much to bear. 

And this evidence that life is swift and cruel
and dangerous eroded at the heart 
of a Midwestern gal who, 
decades and states removed, 
still maintained her lifelong loyalty 
to Ford Motor Company 
and a constant void 
in the shape of her baby brother, 
who never made it home from war.

She was a mystic, 
though not so much a seer 
as she was a feeler. 
What I\u2019m trying to say is, 
she saw herself in that hen. 

And that weight 
of being so deeply tapped into 
the pulse of this earth, 
into the vibrations of joy and pain 
and fear and pleasure and hardship, 
was a burden and a blessing for her. 

Without words, 
her eyes flit and widened, 
and I knew she was imagining her own husband, 
my Grandpa, 
bright and broad and magnificent, 
felled on the roadway, 
left for dead by an indifferent human 
with somewhere to be.

She saw herself 
running back and forth on the shoulder,
her platinum front curl bobbing 
with the jerky adrenaline of panic. 

She saw her family 
and her neighbors 
and her world 
and she couldn\u2019t keep that bird safe 
just like she cant keep any of us safe. 

The layers of emotions 
she carried right at the surface, 
accessible, with her everywhere she went, 
like her big duffle purse with scissors 
and note pads, plural, 
and a Sharpie, fine, 
and a box of Fisherman\u2019s Friend throat lozenges 
or her inhaler, 
all her tools for making it through this life 
ready to go at a moment\u2019s notice 
to attend to the ills and surprises of the world.

A quarter century it\u2019s been
since that moment
on a blazing switchback.
On nights like this, or rather, 
this darkness of early morning, 
I can\u2019t sleep and my thoughts race
like quails in single file 
across a lava river of tar and man\u2019s making. 
I am not quite sure I\u2019ll make it 
to the other side of the road intact.
I can still hear my Grandma\u2019s scream 
and feel the pressure in the cabin shift 
as her tears went airborne. 

And now, 
in the overcast hush 
of a murky East Coast moon, 
where the clouds feel
like cotton batting settling over the forest, 
I too carry that grief, 
her grief, 
that loss, 
her loss, 
for the young chap 
who got checked 
by a careless Arizonan
in front of us so long ago.

Check, mate. 
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMate,\u201d a memory of a witnessing death in the desert, and a family member’s processing thereof, written Thursday, June 04, poem 155 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “Bright Skies,” by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,666],"tags":[1364,1357,1362,673,1351,1365,34,1346,1363,1360,1349,978,93,35,1288,1209,1366,1348,1353,456,1352,1355,1347,11,1361,1359,1358,737,1356,1354,231,1350,71],"class_list":["post-1850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-poems","category-reminiscing","tag-arizonan","tag-bawling","tag-bird","tag-car","tag-catalina-foothills","tag-check-mate","tag-death","tag-desert","tag-east-coast","tag-fishermans-friend","tag-gambels-quail","tag-generational","tag-grandma","tag-grief","tag-june","tag-kia","tag-loss","tag-mate","tag-mercury-wagon","tag-moon","tag-north-oracle-road","tag-prepared","tag-quail","tag-relationships","tag-sharpie","tag-sleepless","tag-surprises","tag-survivor","tag-tears","tag-tucson","tag-war","tag-window","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1873,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions\/1873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}