Road Kill © by Bob Beardon1998
All Rights Reserved
page by Jilli / Fate

ROAD   KILL

By:   Bob Beardon

aka: Thon

A car, headlights, some wild thing
caught in the light, frozen.
It is hit, tumbled, had not expected
or knew which way to run.

The driver stops, gets out, looks.
It still lives, but it is broken, bleeding.
She wants to do something, guilty,
sad for the poor thing as it kicks.

But what, what can she do?
Move it off the road, maybe,
but does it bite, will it bite?
She doesn't know, but is afraid.

And even then, off the road,
what then, leave it to suffer?
For how long, how many hours,
how many days might it struggle?

Take it to a vet, at this hour?
No, none would be open,
and the cost, how much that?
And the blood on her, in her car.

Then leave it, drive away.
Cry for what she did not mean to do,
for the poor creature with its eyes,
so painful, so helpless, so emploring.

She leaves, must justify, think.
Not her fault, not really.
It ran into the road, it knew the risk,
she tried to miss it, she did try.

And the wild thing, it waits,
can't drag itself further, too weak.
So it waits for the next set of lights,
for the next, final impact, and peace.

And what of us, what are we sometimes,
but roadkill on the highway of life,
broken, suffering, waiting, wating,
for the next set of headlights.