Sonnet to a dying squirrel
On seeing the dying flexing squirrel.
“It's hard sometimes, being a bloke,” she said
I'd seen it before and thought it half dead.
“Is that where it was? Is that where it fell?”
Below the old oak in our rutted lane.
“If it's fallen, must've been from some height.”
The poor thing twitched -
its eyes still round and bright.
How can one read another's fatal pain?
Already a fly seized its chance to near
The coagulating and dark blood mud
Insinuating from a matted ear.
I knew I must do something - if I could.
“It must be hard sometimes being a bloke.”
I think these were the very words she spoke.
© R M Meyer
Winswell Water, October 2018