Broken
I found my friend
Lying in the street
By the golf course
On the way to work
Broken
Snapped
Crippled
Run-over
By a car, a bloody car,
And I found myself asking,
Why do I care?
It’s just a groundhog.
But still my heart cried out for him,
As I saw him crawling
Broken
From one side
To the other.
I knew him
I knew his clan
I let my dog chase them
Sometimes catching them
Once killing one,
But this was somehow different
Ignoble
Unnatural
When before I had let my dog,
Black lab, Dakota, all smiles,
Chase them,
For fun
Taught them to be wary
To fear humans
So that they’d live
Just a little longer
But still I cried out for him.
I knew him,
I caught him in a tree once
He looked at me
I gazed at him
As he scuttered
Down the branch
Back down
Into his burrough.
I knew him.
It started to pour
Thunder, demos, Donner, Zeus
Lighting, Thor, flash, Indra
Blood washed from the road
As he crawled,
My friend,
Broken
Across the street.
Back left leg
Crushed
Mangled
Flattened
By some motorist
Some dumb fuck
Who didn’t bother to slow down
As I do
Whenever I see an animal
In the road.
I’ve stopped
For groundhogs,
Squirrels,
And cats.
Even once,
I picked up a turtle
Who was trying to cross the road
“What were you thinking!”
I scolded him,
As I picked him up
From the pavement
And set him down
On the grass
By the road.
I’ve chased stubborn
Groundhogs
Out of the street,
Honked my horn
At squirrels,
To scare them out of my way,
But never did I hit one.
Never did I break one.
But there he was
My friend,
Broken
In the middle of the road.
What sort of fuck
Was in too much of a hurry
To slow down for him?
What sort of bastard
Didn’t have the mercy
To finish the job
That he began?
Anger, rage, blindness,
Adrenal glands
pumping,
fantasies of what I’d do
To that malicious fuck
Who broke my friend’s leg
And left him to die,
Slowly
In the road
Broken.
I’d break him
With my fists
I’d drag him out of his car
With my arms
I’d run the mother fucker over
With his own god damn car
I’d crush his pelvic bone
Right where it met his left leg
And I’d leave him broken
To die
In the middle
Of the road
And a thunderstorm
On a warm
Summer’s
Day.