Roadkill

A raccoon, gray tail still intact, head askew across the highway

Left to decompose on the county road, under spring’s thawing sun.

A sadness swells my throat, a differing of points of view

Where wild used to be, the raccoon mistakes concrete for dirt

Headlights for predator eyes, glowing in the complete night

Crushed undertire, underfoot, underpaw—

Sweep his carcass off that once-grass gravel

The fields of wildflowers and sideoats grama

Given way to industrialism, to a streak of urbanization

So far out in the sticks that even the animals do not know

Where the country ends and the city now begins.