Barriers
I go out for the news this morning
and find what’s left of the slaughtered bird,
guts and wings, on my walk.
I know what did this.
There is someone’s black and white cat
that hunts the woods back of our house,
stalking beyond the fence and stealing
some of my admiration for its great cousins
who bring down prey twice their size;
or it perches on a stump
that’s a throne among the weeds, a power
in its dominion, but so visible
that I’d wondered if it ever made a kill.
Now here’s the proof at my feet
in these black and white wings.
Today I take my stand against relativists
who reduce moral questions to shades of gray.
Things like this belong in the woods,
and that creature has no right to bring its savagery
across the fence and leave it at my door.
I sweep the thing into the grass
before pregnant Helen sees it.
The ants have already started arriving.
It all bothers my stomach at first, but it helps
to see it as a little chicken.
Like the kind we sometimes dress for dinner.
-Gerald Barrax Sr
Student curator: Tiffany Harris