“The strong survive, and all of that,”
he’d tell the limply dangling cloth
between his beak, a former moth,
but doesn’t sense the lunging cat,

who doesn’t think the wheels that run
consider cats their proper prey.
Yet, now he’s just a dead display
beneath the slowly dying sun.

Who knows if later down the road
that truck won’t strike a rotting tree
and bring to bear on top of me
its paralyzing wooden load?

Though like a reel of comic scenes,
it’s also how our stories go:
the endings are the same, we know,
but brought about by varied means.

*****

Paul Burgess writes: “Earlier in the summer, a bird appeared in front of me casually holding a dying moth and looking almost cheerful. The encounter got me thinking about deaths that come suddenly, without malice, and without much meaning to the creatures or things that have caused them. I can’t say exactly why, but some combination of my mood and the circumstances made the sight more vivid and significant to me than it might have been on another day.”

‘Another Old, Familiar Story’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to The Road Not Taken, Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Pulsebeat, Snakeskin, Lighten Up Online, and several other publications.  https://paulburgesswritingandlanguage.blog/

“Kaka (Nestor sp) and Pururi Moth (Aenetus virescens)” by Nga Manu Images NZ is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.