Woodchucks
by Maxine Kumin
Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.
The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets’ neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck’s face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.
Ten minutes later I dropped the mother.She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next.O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.
There’s one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form.I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they’d all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- The Current by Raymond Carver
- Владимир Высоцкий – Свадебная
- Lines Written in Windsor Forest poem – Alexander Pope
- The Village Garden poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone by Stephen Dunn
- Kodja Mustafa Pasha poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- Song by Robert Creeley
- Live Baits by Satish Verma
- The Basket poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- What Is Woman But A Song! by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- The River Has Its Memories by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Addressed To Miss Macartney, Afterwards Mrs. Greville, On Reading The Prayer For Indifference by William Cowper
- Joy-Bells by Siegfried Sassoon
- Федор Тютчев – 23 Fevrier 1861
- Arcady Unheeding by Siegfried Sassoon
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).