Monday's Poetry- Phillip Larken, The Mower
The Mower
By Philip Larken
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
Oh so hard...this past summer Maggie found a gorgeous fat toad in our front yard. We laughed watching her sniff & it jump. I went inside to get my camera & Charlie pulled the car out of the garage to do some clean up on it. I went back to the toad to find he had accidentally driven over it! We were both crushed....so silly in a way but sad. It turned such a light fun day dark.
ReplyDeleteIt's not silly at all! I believe that God gave us dominion over the animals, but also wanted us to see how amazing they are and how much love he put into their creation, so that we would want to care for them as best as we could. I was weed-eating this summer and hit a small milksnake. It was alive, but wounded to where it needed to be humanly put out of suffering. I was just sick!! I kept telling him I was so, so sorry. Which also seems silly, but he just looked at me, not able to understand what had happened. It is heart-breaking to be sensitive in that way, but I think we should cherish it rather than become hardened...
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