I’ve a witty reply
if anyone asks,
those bones in the bathroom,
who do they belong to?

incongruous
in among 
emollient
health and beauty
on the shelves,
take two at bedtime,
do not drink,
razor soap band-aids

a larger jar,
someone’s preserves
picked up
tentatively
click, clop,
gruesome thought
dead ancestor
oh surely not

mine, say I, cleverly,
I got them from an eagle,
in the park, under their tree,
keep a look out, you’ll find
pellets: like matted
coarse grey sock wool
knitted up with broken feathers:
bones, feathers, gristle, pelt
compressed in the crop
regurgitated
in gawky lumps:
when you’ve soaked them,
tease them apart
pick out the bones
like Christmas dinner
sticky and stinky
with scraps of flesh

field guides are no good
for getting these guys on your list:
could that have been a squirrel’s thigh,
a robin’s skull?
we take our daily walks
in a peaceful killing ground:
try keeping a tally,
count the ducklings every day
on the pretty little pond,

the pair bred in 
the park again this year.
one eaglet fledged
--well, they at least
passed on their genes,
which really is the only point,
biologically speaking.

as for my little
charnel heap,
take Yorick here,
another predator really:
imagine his domestic round,
how many yards of worm a day?

poor tacky bone,
do you think it would cheer him up
in avian Nirvana
if he could think his death was not in vain?
perhaps before the eagle scoffed him up
he’d already donated his seed
to stuff some other ugly raptor’s gut.