death

I smell the badger before I see it / sprawled flat / on its back / in a bramble thicket / right by my boot

despite my revulsion / I have a compulsion / to witness the scene / so I part the brambles to get a better look

black and white fur laid out to the root / that fine spine / those whorls of ribs / teeth and skull / the whole machine / cruelly broken open / exposed to the rain / raw mortality / measured out in maggots / diptera / coleoptera / devout followers / hotly rolling in the hollow chamber of an eye

and suddenly I don’t want to be there / horribly aware / of the pattern of bones / in my boots / the rooks in the trees / the roots below / and I really have to go / get well away from there / and fill my lungs with cleaner air

alas, poor badger
go, get you to the sett / tell them / let them eat a thousand worms /
to this favour they must come

walking with Lola out to the woods
we cut through the cemetery straight
find a plastic rose from one of the graves
blown over by the churchyard gate

I guess they used a plastic bloom
so they didn’t have to come so often
even though they look quite cheap round a tomb
and tacky as hell on a coffin

but these are the dodges you use around death
to keep the whole thing more tractable
it makes the dead seem closer to home
and not quite so non-contactable

oh – what would they say if these bones could talk?
would they tell of their loves and caprices?
would they fling back the stones and struggle to walk
or immediately fall into pieces?

No. They are dead. The End is the End.
(I’m sorry to burst your bubble
but better you hear it now, from a friend,
and save yourself decades of trouble)

because death is neither a sleep nor a bourn
– the euphemisms I could mention –
and this plastic flower you brought to mourn
marks a truly natural dimension

It’s a part of life, I’m happy to say
as real as that cemetery crow
everyone has to go through it some day
– so that’s reassuring to know