In Lent

Dead deer a week now by the snowy gate. Do I have to watch it be eaten? Do I have to see who comes first, who quarrels, who stays? And there is the question of the night, what flesh preferred by which creature— what sinew and fat, the organs, the eyes. These appetites: it’s enough to know the swoop and cut of wings over the snarl of something leaping away. Do I have to see the icy figure fused to the ground, scrabbled snow, not lovely or deep, but the surface of something spoiled? By now the rib bones arch above it all, unbroken light shining between them, above the black cavity. And I hear the crows, complaint, complaint splitting the morning, hunched over the skull. They know their offices.