MOOSE ALLEY

John Grey

The road is a slaughterhouse

on this fine spring morning,

an array of squashed squirrels,

blindsided raccoons, smooshed possums,

even a deer half-buried in a ditch.

Man has been through in

his four-wheeled killing machines

and culled the local wildlife.

In the hunting stakes,

one steering wheel

is worth ten high-powered rifles.

Even a crow is splattered.

Flight couldn’t save it.

Not the way cars fly around here.

Farther along, I see a rescue vehicle,

and two tow trucks,

one hauling away a dead moose,

the other, a cratered car.

In the game of life,

this is a tie.

But there are no extra innings.

mage: Dwight Burdette Wikimedia Commons