Road Kill
by John RC Potter
I saw a raccoon lying on the side of the road last night
on his back, freshly dead, his paws raised in supplication;
he reminded me of me:
but can the dead still be moved through manipulation?
Whenever I see raccoons lying dead on the road,
they remind me of all those who have loved and lost:
dead and dying hearts on this endless highway of love,
whose owners took a chance but at quite a high cost.
I saw a raccoon dying on the side of the road last night
on his back, still alive, wondering what had happened to him;
he reminded me of me:
just a heap on the highway of love as the light grows dim.
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John RC Potter is a gay man from Canada, living in Istanbul, and an international educator (currently university counsellor, formerly principal & teacher). He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist, May 2023). His poems and stories have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”, June 2023), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”, June 2023) & Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”, July 2023). John RC Potter – Author Website (author-blog.org)
