The Witching Hour
It was the witching hourWhen only the dead, vampires and investment bankers are about.
Yet, despite the cursed time,
I had stumbled out into the godforsaken dark
With the poor dear puking dog
Under the raddled moon. It was silent,
But for the unexpected speeding car
Screaming through blackened unlit spaces.
Rallying in the unpeopled air, the dog snuffed, intent
Catching the scent and zigzagging about the lanes
Pursuing something that was not there,
But had been. Then I noticed the blood,
Gleaming blackly in the moonlight.
The dog lurched forward, her tongue lolling
Then pulled up sharp, reversed and plunged away to the other verge
Swerved along the bloodied trail till there we saw the crushed bundle
Of Badger’s guts and fur and the mystery was solved.
Just as a nocturnal van scudded by, screaming with weighted power and speed
I pulled the dog away, leaving the mangled corpse to the ministering crows
Who would do their undertaking come the dawning.
How stupid of the creature to keep on following ancestral trails
Now the new road goes wending, rending its rough way through Ancient Badger Land.
How careless of the creature not to read the signs, look left then right then right again
And not take flight when the lorry or hurrying van lumbers into view.
How is this holocaust of night-time deaths
--Foxes, toads, deer, the now all but extinct hedgehog--
How is it in any way our fault?
We have to get from A to B at speed and if woods and old meadows
Are in our way why shouldn’t we tear them up?
How else will the crammed new estates of non-affordable homes
Be connected to the groaning overburdened towns?
How else get that Amazon delivery on time?
Or stock the factories and shops with stuff?
Our overbreeding surely trumps the fading feeding of wild ones
Not even tasty enough to eat. Their defeat; our gain.
“For all life’s fears that we have got
Ravelled in this once sacred plot”
Should such accelerating deaths
Cause us even momentary pain?
Drive on…
