Daniel Patrick Sheehan

Groundhogs

In summer we stretched and stapled wire mesh

Over the holes gnawed in the old shed walls.

The mother hadn’t shown herself for weeks

And we’d trapped the kits, a half-dozen or so,

Hauling them one at a time to the creek

Where they bolted through the cage door to flash

Tooth and tail into the feathering brush.

Imagine them now as they wind back again,

Evading the bobcat, hawk, and coyote,

Sniffing the maze of miles between there and home,

Moving by night along curbs, across sewers,

Undulating under the sodium lights,

Only to find their old doors webbed with steel,

Their mother missing and no track or scent

To guide them from one garden to another.

For all the creatures of God it’s the same:

Tipped into a new world, the old sealed shut,

No one but you remembering how it was.

In homes to come, the rooms are never warm.

Something blazes in the dark beyond the walls

And means you no good. It means no good at all.

Daniel Patrick Sheehan is a poet and journalist in eastern Pennsylvania. His poems have appeared in First Things, Dappled Things, Modern Age, Nimrod, and other journals.