on my way home I list the carcasses I find: a lamb and a kid
metres apart – the lamb’s mouth is open, its sexless tongue
touching bare asphalt, now damp and darkened, its clouded
eyes still wet and wide; the kid is less graceful, pink flowers
of flesh burst from where the skull should be, organs lie next
to body, withdrawn, in curdling clumps of rope.

later I count: an old dog, graying about the mouth, prone as
though asleep; a chicken, crushed by the traffic’s convoy,
with only its dulling feathers peering through the road’s
rising dust.

the day will come.