Conservation

I killed the mothers for you

Washed the almost formed eggs from their bodies in the February rain.

Soon it would be frogs raising their young in your ponds,

Or leaving them to their course, spawned and abandoned in the weather,

To the overseeing hand of your protection.

The ducks must not eat them.

So I killed them.

Mother after mother.

Tore the delicately veined eggs from their limp bodies.

Whose right was it to be a mother?

Together we enacted conservation.

And the rain caused the sky and the ground to meet

Running in its longmade courses down our track

Each trough cutting

Inescapable

Each year the same

Water flowing through erosion.