Fragments on the Death of a Muskrat

A POEM

By David N. Beauregard, O.M.V. | November 1983

Ballpeened by a bumper,

Struck down by steel,

Bowled hard over pavement,

Done in with a wheel.

O cinders, O gators, O gadabout hens,

O children with maces and pigs in clean pens,

Please arrest, I do pray you,

Your primordial urge

To pause in sad convocation

And sing this rat’s dirge.

Four

O God of love, Your Kingdom is a beach

with gold sand —

each grain…

The Hidden Years

A workman asked at a village door,

“Have you a bed, a chair,

A fallen…

On the Trinity

When time was yet unmade nor seasons wrought,

Beginning’s birth unborn and unbegun,

Then God’s…