November.(Poem) - Ploughshares

 November  I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk...                                          --Robinson Jeffers     The squirrels are up to their nuts in pecans,    And the largesse of the trees    Has made them careless in their comings and goings,    Their carryings and buryings.    Every few blocks there's one    Who zigged just when he should have zagged;    Car-compacted, sometimes their pink lungs    Pop out of their mouths    So it looks like they've been blowing bubble gum.    After a few more days of crushings,    They have been transubstantiated    Into the sacramental wafers    Of the Large Breed Dog Apostolic Church.    I joke in the way we must joke about death    Or wear the rictus of the dead ourselves,    But I'm sad for the squirrels, sad too for the possum    Lying by the streetside oleanders for three days now.    Its size startles: big as a cat and heavy-bodied.    It startles, too, because usually they don't get hit;    They'll turn toward the oncoming car,    Their eyes will light up like phosphorus,    And the car will brake,    Unless the driver doesn't care,    Which must have happened here.    The eyes on the first day were deep black disks    That made me think it must still be alive,    And there seemed to be little muscle tics around the mouth,    But I couldn't bear to prod it with my toe--    If it was alive, I'd have to do something,    And I had nothing near a plan--    So I stared until I was sure it was still.     It has taken these three days for the eyes to close,    Or perhaps it's swelling that has made them seem to close.    I've been taken to task, and more than once,    For dwelling like this on animal death,    But let me tell you a little story,    A little human story.    I'm going back 36 years to a night after 10:00,    And it may even have been a night of this month    Because I remember sycamore leaves    Sidling like crabs on the street.    I was walking my dog.    And there was the tremolo of a screech owl,    And then suddenly a terrible sound,    Like a cat screaming in heat,    Broke into the tremolo,    And both the dog and I bristled    Because both of us knew it was not a cat sound    But a human one.    Around the corner we found a boy,    Three or four years old, in his pajamas,    Howling in panic, a long way from speech.    I took his hand and led him to each of the houses that were lit.    That long ago, people answered their doors even at night,    And finally we found a woman who knew who he was.    His mother was a cocktail waitress    Who started her shift    An hour after the father came home from his shift at the box       factory.    Her taillights would barely disappear    Before he took off for his night of drinking    Leaving the boy with his eight year old sister.    I didn't know if he had left the house awake    Or had sleepwalked his way out.    The neighbor called the police, who took him home    To the frightened sister--cops at the door;    What a thing for a kid to waken to.    That boy would be a middle-aged man now.    I often wonder what became of him.     Has he gone passive, alone in the dark    With a needle in his arm?    Is he scratching his pimply ass in jail,    Harmed for doing harm?    It's easy to see him like that,    Hard to imagine him as an orthopedic surgeon    Or a sports writer or a nouvelle cuisine chef.    If you lie long enough in misery,    You don't rise from it,    You make more misery to match it,    And even more to surpass it,    And then it becomes a career.    Tell me, when's the last time    You saw a baby squirrel?    See what I'm getting at?    They're kept in the nest    Until they're grown enough to outrun a dog.    Cars, of course, remain the lightning bolt,    The hand of God,    The mystery beyond mystery    Against which there is no defense.