early morning sunrise

I wonder if when the

raccoon opened its eyes

in this twilight of the hot day,

it knew of its imminent death

by metal and rubber in the cool

of the dawn.  It woke, like it

does every dusk, scavenging

for food. (Such a hateful word,

scavenger.) Did it realize that

the car, bearing down at a “reckless”

29 miles per hour, delivering

the early morning newspaper,

would bring a kind of solitude

and quiet to its hunger, that it

would sate its belly with blood and

its throat with bile and yesterday’s

supper. It lay upturned on the dashed

yellow lines, it’s spine, a perpendicular

twist in its own defecate. Twilight coming

on again and again, done and undone.

Its last breath shuttered

by a closed mouth.