-requiem for small domestic animals with a consideration to others-

1.
Thom McAn was a popular shoe-man

and invaluable neighborhood asset
in the small pet casket-making business.

and now this:

there’s a dead skunk floating

in my neighbor's pool and she

want's me to take a look.

I scooped it out with the skimmer

and flipped it over the backyard fence

into a patch of low-lying brush.

(as my young mother would've opined:

“poor little thing.”)

the death of the housefly was different.

she’d smash it with the wire-mesh swatter

so hard, the aftermath looked like Jackson Pollock
stopped by to paint her a new one.

2.
the Germans are angry again.

the French continue flummoxed
at the lack of respect for their war effort,
and with the passage of time, the Italians

seem to have softened the edges of the animated
exaggerations of their hand gestures.

3.
under consideration were alternative placements
for the skunk in the water, none more fitting than the one chosen.

I'm living in the time of the sticky virus, and

attitudes are changing by the hour with news on a roll.

overcast skies this morning.

5/28/20