Procession

There is a dead squirrel

on my street; no difference

between him and the tar.

Except, his still swimming tail

an upright, a white flag of surrender.

His friends insist on visitation

even as commuters cars

threaten their mourning.

And I think of our rituals.

How no one has attended

his little body with flowers

or removed him to the grass.

How instead we avoid the slowdown.

We erect no plaque

of remembrance.

We sing no psalms.

We so full of ceremony

and upstanding take no pain

in a crushed body

if it is too small.

Dagmar Morgan