Scavengers

February 15, 2014

Scavengers

Skunk:

the smell of wartime,

and our backyard the battleground.

It was striped stink-bombs

versus masked nighttime bandits

in the war to end all wars,

the spoils to be the banquet of spoiled food

from the unlocked dumpsters

of the restaurant next door.

My parents fought with the managers,

the dumpsters being their responsibility,

on their property, not ours.

My siblings and I fought amongst ourselves,

although that had nothing to do

with food, or territory, or wild animals.

I don’t remember who called the skunk-catcher,

or if the dumpsters were ever locked, but in the end

it seems we gave some kind of victory to the raccoons,

whether the creatures earned it

or not.