Carnage

For Nina Sloan

She asks me, “Were their eyes open?”
I affirm.
             “If so,” she continues,
“she wouldn't return for them;
they're good to go on their own.”

From these rows cleared for the aftermath,
I place each one into the hole
in the fence; they squeeze through, fall.
They'll return here when older.

These three, they'll never be alone.
I think I can hear their hearts beat—out there
in overgrowth, as two more
hearts lie still under the bush.

It was an accident, that much is true.
And it was I that killed them here
with this machine whose work is
teaching grass the song of fear.