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# Mate
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/mate/
- Published: 2026-06-04T19:47:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:08:02.000Z
- Description: “Mate,” 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
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Poems, Reminiscing, Arizonan, Bawling, Bird, Car, Catalina foothills, Check Mate, death, Desert, East Coast, Fisherman's Friend, Gambel's Quail, Generational, Grandma, grief, June, KIA, Loss, Mate, Mercury Wagon, Moon, North Oracle Road, Prepared, Quail, relationships, Sharpie, Sleepless, Surprises, Survivor, Tears, Tucson, War, Window, World, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

One blindingly bright Tucson morning,   
while riding passenger   
in my grandmother’s 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:   
“Oh no! Oh dear, dear, dear!”  
  
Her exclamation became fast tears,   
as she gestured to my window side   
and at a little Gambel’s 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’s 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:   
“*Oh no oh no oh no!*   
Quails mate for life!   
What will she *do*?!   
The poor dear she’s all alone!”   
  
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’m 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’m 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’t 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’s Friend throat lozenges   
or her inhaler,   
all her tools for making it through this life   
ready to go at a moment’s notice   
to attend to the ills and surprises of the world.  
  
A quarter century it’s been  
since that moment  
on a blazing switchback.  
On nights like this, or rather,   
this darkness of early morning,   
I can’t sleep and my thoughts race  
like quails in single file   
across a lava river of tar and man’s making.   
I am not quite sure I’ll make it   
to the other side of the road intact.  
I can still hear my Grandma’s 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.