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Unceremonious
John Davis Jr.

What does one say, if anything,
while burying a small raccoon,
road-struck and rigored, found
in the front yard’s grass before
a farmwork-full day free from rain?

I did not know your life —
brief, nocturnal — your rummagings
or foragings. Did you frequent
the creek a mile back in the woods?
Ascend the limbs of its cranny-barked oaks?

In this azalea bed, I cover
your grey and black form, hopeful
that soil is kind, that your quick end
gives rise to resplendent flowers
so bright they slow fast-passing cars.

—
John Davis Jr. is the author of The Places That Hold (Eastover Press, 2021) and four other poetry collections. His work has appeared in Nashville Review, The Common, The American Journal of Poetry, and in many other venues internationally. He holds an MFA from University of Tampa and teaches English for Jesuit High School, also in Tampa. He is an eighth-generation Floridian.

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