Places and Times

Road Kill

Vultures swoop from sun-bruised skies.
Something dead lies in the road,
a flattened host to beetles and flies.

Bits of fur and flesh and eyes
broil on the asphalt, while overhead
vultures swoop from sun-bruised skies.

See the heat waves dance and rise
from the corpse stuck in sticky red,
a flattened host to beetles and flies.

A lizard at the roadside shies
from the copper smell of sun-cooked blood.
Vultures swoop from sun-bruised skies

to peck a share of the carrion prize,
the shapeless smear lying spread,
a flattened host to beetles and flies.

One wonders if God ever sighs
over this bloody bit of road
where vultures swoop from sun-bruised skies
on a flattened host to beetles and flies.

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Updated last on:  2001/06/19