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Dear crew of The Broken Binnacle,

Sharing another poem by Ben Marsh. As you go about your happy, sunny-filled Saturday, memento mori. Besides that, have a wonderful weekend!

I don’t particularly heed bad omens,

Although this creature is the ninth I’ve found

In Eden — a pigeon with its head flattened

Into a bloody patch that stains the flagstone.

~

Here’s an unblemished blackbird lying still

In the dry birdbath; an abandoned nest

Upended on the Adirondack burying

Dead chicks within its twigs; a bullfrog stabbed

~

By my own quarrelsome and nosy rake;

In unkempt mulch, a jay that writhes, undone

By plate glass windows at full speed; Mice rotting

Near the tap (Purrsephone was toying

~

With them until they moved no more); a wasting

Whitetail stag, drinking feebly from my sprinkler,

who limps away and who I find a bit

later up-road with dress-black flies stood, mourning

~

The carcass. My eyes water. So much death

Surrounds and underwrites my paradise.

My dog-poop shovel scoops the pigeon’s bones;

I stretch the hose and rinse the bloodied stones.

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