Bird
 

It’s still sitting there—
if you can call it that—
neither “sitting,” nor “resting,” nor
“lying down” can quite
convey its lack of life.
Suffice to say: it’s there.
 

Ever more a remnant,
day-by-day-by-day.
Its colors are remnants:
flesh red, intestine orange,
feather gray; and soon:
not but dry-bone white.
 

The thin white bones: pressed
into a diagram
by four, five-thousand pounds.
A museum skeleton:
flat like a fish, perished
long before Holocene.
 

Yet this is not the work
of paleontologists
busy with their chisels,
brushes and what-have-you;
no scientific method
governs this decay.
 

Bugs
 

A grubby congregation
holds mass atop the corpse.
A wonder such minute
mandibles so quickly
can claim what once belonged
to the thrumming of a heart.
 

Scrupulous, their God;
a singular commandment:
waste not what once was life.
And little do they care
for debates on the topic
of whether their six-legged
 

clerics can truly
transubstantiate
that fowl communion.
Their God presides for good;
they need not hunger for
a dead messiah’s flesh.
 

Bones
 

Maybe it’s the bones
which seal away the Soul,
while insects only eat
what Soul had never
touched—no—graced;
and when the flesh is long
 

consumed, returned to dirt,
the Soul remains in place;
and we shan’t be around
to witness the miraculous
when all the bones as well
are dust—the Soul escaped.

J Kramer Hare is a native of Pittsburgh, PA where he lives and writes. When not reading or writing he enjoys rock climbing and listening to jazz. His work has appeared in Uppagus, the Ulu Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, The Road Not Taken, and Untenured. He can be found at kramerpoetry.com.