Joan L Cannon’s poem Valentine appeared here in March 2013.

Road Kill
By Joan L Cannon

You watch the road ahead
with glances to the side.
You feel a central jolt
as from an inward shock
when you see the swatch
of bloody grey in the grass
as you try to look
at black asphalt once again …
but the after image doesn’t fade.

Once darting wild,
or someone’s pet?
A hand-pawed ‘possum?
Heedless squirrel
betrayed by its daring?

In the balance of eons
you know the logic
that absolves you (and others)
who leave scores of
mangled bones and ragged pelts
as dinners for carrion crows.

There’s no confessor prepared
to listen to such a petty sin.
It crosses your mind to be grateful
you’ve never seen statistics.

If you can’t pretend they’re invisible,
or if you can’t learn to pretend it’s fate
–that they’re only bits and pieces
that happen to have been
as alive as you are now,
you too would die too soon
of knowing what you must deny.