Where do little wild animals go when they die?
Does a weary dog ever collapse in a public park
And what do they do with it after?
Theoretically, you know the answer,
But the details are another one of those things
That other adults learned somewhere together and then just forgot to tell you.
And you don’t think about it. You don’t need to think about it
Until one day you find a long gray cat sprawled across the sidewalk.
Fluffy, maybe, fat? Maybe? No, not fat, but Bloated.
And you could walk around him or step over him,
But he really does block the way.
“call animal control”
This is all your friend has to say about it when you text her,
And you’re pretty sure they’re for living animals anyway,
That go crazy and bite people and run unpredictably into the street,
But you find on google that they’re only available to respond
On such-and-such a day of the week, at such-and-such an hour.
(even though you’re sure that for every second every hour every day, people and animals are dying in droves....)
So you decide to walk on the other side of the street for a while,
And after a week, the cat is just a gray pelt.
(you don’t know what’s underneath...)
And after a month, even the bones are gone,
And your mind boggles at the sum totality of all the things
That you don’t know you don’t know...