a battered squirrel, so freshly dead
there wasn’t even a fly,
just there, wounded from a tire,
blood where it had been squashed

the first, there was a buzzard
poking at the corpse,
unaware that it should be in mourning,
that it wasn’t behaving appropriately

the last, the fowl was gone
& it was just the lifeless body,
even lonelier than before,
not even acknowledged by its abusers

as humans, we see our faces in everything,
marking the earth with our inconsiderate acts;
because i am human,
i wonder which role i play in this scene:

am i the squirrel,
subject to bystanders
& beings who feast on my newly rotting flesh,
unaware, in my death, of this abuse

or am i the bird,
inconsiderate of proper protocol
when things die
& flees even my own cruel hunger

or am i, truly, just myself?
luxuriously in my car,
centering myself in the miseries
of other beings