Road Kill.

ROAD KILL

You may have thought things would come right again
If only you could sit quite still and wait.

--Larkin

   Driving to the hospital late last night,
   I turned down a road that ran between dark fields.
   Up ahead, in the middle of the road,
   a small brown rabbit was sitting very still,
   looking down at a rabbit who was dead,
   a mangled corpse, run over by a car.
   Lit up by my headlights, he took off toward the fields.
   Slowing down, I drove by the dead rabbit,
   then stopped the car, and watched in the rear-view mirror.
   The rabbit came back and sat in the road again,
   resuming the vigil for his dead friend, or kin.
   Quiet, still, he sat and stared at him.

   Touched, unable to guess what you felt or thought,
   I found it hard to watch you suffer this.
   You have no words to understand what death is,
   no words to ease your sadness, to console,
   to mourn or pray, or tell your friend farewell.

   I hope you made it safely home last night
   and woke this morning in the warm sunlight.
   This morning, at my table under the trees,
   because you have no words, I've written these.

--MICHAEL CREAGAN