On Parker Hill, she
brakes to a hard stop.
She says she is going to
remove that squirrel back
there where it had ended.
I remark at the responsibility
she takes upon herself
each time death strikes.
I ask if she’s the “deer lady,”
the one who removes
dead fawns from the side
of this and other roads.
She is not but responds,
“How sweet” as she
with large dustpan
retraces her route to
that unseen apparently
dead squirrel to be treated
well for what it’s done during
an accumulating lifetime
about to be collected and
then dispersed in some way
other than by carrion raptors.
Ed is a poet, painter and middling chess player in Santa Rosa, California. He has published a dozen books, with poems appearing in North American Review, Spillway, Volt, and ZYSSYVA. (blog)