For 14 years I’ve lived in this back yard.
Accustomed to its fauna and inured
to critter evidence, still this is hard.
It’s sadder than a headless hummingbird,
and more upsetting than a ‘possum, dead
upon the deck and in the rain.
At 9 a.m. I chanced to turn my head,
and now a dying skunk has filled my brain.

Peripheral the vision was at first.
I noted at my left the black-and-white.
His ribcage moved but I assumed the worst,
and looking closer then, I got the sight
of final breath, his eye about to dim.
I said goodbye and now I’m mourning him.