Roadkill

Steve said, “I‘m so tired of looking at roadkill I believe
I‘ll walk. As a young man horseback
I could say I‘d eaten of everything I‘d killed,
excepting the odd armadillo and old Ruby,
who it fell to me one awful morning to shoot
when she drug herself up half froze and bested
by coyotes. There‘s no honor in dying
by the tire, nor in the secret councils of buzzards
laid public by the road; even a shot dog
ends better. I fear to sit at my table in glory
spread rich with every life I took in passing,
every squirrel, rabbit, sparrow, every Junebug
ever squashed in my hurry fried up with gravy,
a wry recompense for owning the earth.”