Poem-One Stop Poetry: Mortality

This is my first visit to “One Stop Poetry” and I thank moondustwriter for intoducing me to it. I’d like to post a poem published a few years ago in a small literary magazine:

Mortality

A dead quail lay on the path,
legs extended
grasping the last touch of life,
eyelids sealing off earth’s beauty forever.

Layers of gold feathers
zigzagged its empty breast.
Clods of earth soiled
the handiwork of some obscure Artisan.

I knelt to honor
nature’s defiled chalice,
scooped the chilled stiff form into a plastic bag.

It landed with a thud in the empty garbage can.