The Innocuous House of Butchery

I hear fired a single clean shot;
and later a fire burns in the waste behind the little white house,
so plain and unpretentious,
in the vast field beyond my backyard.

On another day from my kitchen window,
I see a cow dragged from a pickup limping, falling, stumbling
into the room of death;
and a blast reverberates
into the clouds.

The downed, the disposed and the aged—
and during hunting season, the deer carcasses to be butchered—
are brought to him, an old retired slaughterer who walks with a limp—
arthritis in his bones.
He earns his living this way.

The farmers bring their tired and old and dead
in open wagons and pick-up trucks. From a distance, the piled corpses resembling
torn bloodied blankets are carried in heaps into the humble white cottage,.
Inside their flayed skin flies
Over the bloodied floor.

Carcasses are tied feet up until every drop of blood dribbles
into the buckets beneath.
Venison meat is cleanly piled in neat slabs
where the ragged bodies had lain;
discards are thrown into trash barrels.

The stench is intense.

In the evening,
gracefully circling the house of butchery are three hawks,
their soaring wings spread against
a magnificent scarlet sunset.