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.

Faith

Trellised clouds upwards towards

earth’s moon

Set within a night-dome

of…

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Poetry was once understood to be an anthropological episteme, a way of knowing, if only through a glass darkly.

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A workman asked at a village door,

“Have you a bed, a chair,

A fallen…