Corpses Start Dark Ages

The living cells of roadkill,
Living cells of window birds,

All their loyalty undone
By behaviors of the whole,

By hazards those behaviors
Could never have evolved for,

By the broken skeletons,
And then the failures to breathe.

The living cells won’t last long.
For a little while, the bird

Is still warm, as is the doe,
And then the lack of supplies

From fresh blood, fresh oxygen,
Starve individual cells,

Individual cells caught
In the crash of the system

That had seemed built out of them,
That broke and abandoned them.