Afternoon Walk During a Pandemic

At the midpoint of the staircase
A dead squirrel,
A canopy of cottonwood branches,
And my startled little scream.

There is nothing to fear
In the small, bloodless corpse,
Its cinnamon fur glinting in the light,
A specimen on display just for me.

Except the stark truth of energy halted,
Life in motion now inalterably still,
A leap miscalculated, a nut dropped midair,
A mission vanishing into nothingness.

We are all returned to Earth now,
What we once strived for fading to dust.
And so we make something new
From the ashes of our own lost selves.