Your Karma Ran Over My Fox

Last night—this morning—someone speeding hit
a fox. I found him dying in the brush
where he had crawled, just inches from his dig.
I tried to get him to a vet, but he
repelled me with a sharp-toothed snarl, no quibble
but a rank defiance and good-bye.

The conference champion gets a first-round bye
and Golden Globes are granted to a hit
TV show (are they biased? Let's not quibble),
while commissions are the Fuller Brush
man's earned reward. Each man receives what he
deserves, they say—it's karma, you must dig.

So cosmic justice says that I should dig
a grave for this poor fox? And by the bye,
about that reckless driver—doesn't he
get karmic tickets for the fox he hit?
A glancing blow, it's true, a sidelong brush—
but still, the fox is dead. That's just a quibble.

And "unintentional" is also quibble.
The careless comment and the vicious dig,
the calculated cut, the casual brush-
off, both draw blood. Each long-drawn-out good-bye
begins with blindfold darts, that somehow hit
the mark. He pled his innocence, but he

knew better all along. Like lawyers, he
reduced the heart of matters to a quibble
knowing he did damage with each hit.
The deepest traps are always those we dig
ourselves; our authorship gives us no bye
and self-made pitfalls hidden in the brush

are lethal as the arsenic on the brush
that Monet, absent-minded, licked while he
recorded emerald green impressions.'Bye.
I've no time for your everlasting quibble.
Leave me here alone and let me dig
a victim's grave for the poor fox you hit.

His teeth are hard, and gleam. No quibbler, he.
I dig black dirt to hide his orange brush.
It hits me hard to say the last good-bye.

--for Read Write Poem. End words courtesy of Watchout4Snakes.

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