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TWO POEMS

by Ian Hunter

 

FOX FALLEN

Race the cars up the hill
as the dual carriageway
squeezes out of sight
and leave the chaotic jockeying
for position behind

Come over the rise
and see the young fox
fallen in the middle of the road
back bent beyond its limits
snapped as life fled
leaving only a body and a
splash of blood

Know that the fox will
be whittled down
in the days ahead,
pulped, compressed,
erased by vehicles bearing
God’s slow rubber

BADGER BROKEN

You have to hand it to those badgers.
They are sturdy creatures.
Lying still beside the road
offering no clue to what killed them.
No blood, no innards.
They might just be sleeping off the
effects of their nocturnal activities.

But as the days pass
they lose their lustre, their sheen.
Become shop soiled.
Two lie dead on the same stretch of road
and they seem to acknowledge
each other in a final trick.
Legs pulled up,
paws frozen in mid-wave,
or a delayed reaction,
burning through neurones and nerves
and muscles and tendons,
trying to ward off whatever claimed them.