Raccoon
With a three pronged garden tool
I lifted the animal’s lumpish head
beyond the chimney flange
and it lay, pivoted on its neck,
looking down on me,
so young and light-eyed
that it startled me into thinking
it was still alive.
I put the tool down
and with a gloved hand
gently pulled it by its head
over the metal hinge
and onto the cardboard laid out below.
A young raccoon
part of a family
that had taken up residence
annoyingly,noisily,
in the base of the chimney behind our hearth.
Dead now, apparently from poisoning,
like its parent
who had crawled up
into a corner of our porch to die
a few days before.
Death in our house.
A commonplace. A nothing perhaps.
Yet I thought of all the chem lawns,
mosquitos be gone, roach motels
stretching across our proud, sprayed land.
We, the poisoning,trapping, shooting species,
loving and destroying our home.