In denial, I tossed them out into the snow bank
behind my house, the little corpses inside.
Then later after a few inches more of snow,
I went to retrieve them, didn’t want to have
Wasted money.
I kicked around in the snow to find them,
Took them, pulled the bars back
And shook the stiffened crushed bodies out.
They were quarrelsome in death
and didn’t want to come.
The metal bars that had taken their lives
Were coated in slippery death-grease
In the snow.
Finally, after feeling their tails
whip against my hand,
they fell away to make new holes
In the powder.
When spring comes,
Their wet, preserved, patient bodies
Will still be there to harangue me
With pathetic silence.
Winter owls, won’t you read this,
let hunger come to take away the sad residuum
of my household crimes?
