PREDATORS
Fox took a prize chicken.
Coyote got the cat.
Ron’s dad went out into the woods
with a rifle on the morn
but didn’t shoot a thing.
Not even the raccoon
that stripped a turtle from its shell.
Ron burst into tears three times.
He raised that bird himself.
The cat came from Rescue.
Okay so the turtle
was no dear companion
but to see the empty shell
just lying there…
Ron would have cried his heart out
had it been one of those painted turtles
that sunned beside the lake.
“That’s nature.” his father would say,
as he put the unfired rifle back in its case.
“Fox, coyote, raccoon, they all gotta eat.’
Ron tried to imagine a world
without predators.
There was no such world.
Just an age. And younger than his.
