Destinations

Every day we meet these bodies on the road,

The torn-up porcupines like tanks exploded,

The battered cats, dogs, raccoons, dead.

Every road we take is normally bloodied,

Bodies the usual, like thrown-out beer cans,

Or cars abandoned in the fields to rust,

Only these animals were never machines.

It hurts to think of so much living lost,

Of where they wanted to go and never got to,

Of the brute man who killed them for no reason

Simply because he saw no reason not to,

And kills on every day in every season,

And will not look at what he is doing,

To love, himself, or the starving nations,

Slow down and think, consider destinations.

Destructive man, poor rat, just keeps on going.

-May Sarton, from The Silence Now