“Im tired of being a butcher”
I mumble to myself as a doleful eye 
Ricky stared up at me. 

trapped in a cage my father hadnt warned
him or me about,
much like the hospital, not gonna die
but a far cry from living 

standard practice is to dispatch 
then unlatch, dump the remains
of naviety and boyhood away from the fence

“I’m tired of being the butcher” 
I mumble again to myself 
winding down the same road where 
a different dispatch was called in 
10 years before, MPDS 25 

I raise the cage door by the river
and they burst forth 10 feet 
a dumbfounded turn about, 
I think they said “Did I make it?” 

The pups cry in the car
so I know it time to go
a sunsets on two lives saved today, him and me.