I: Day One
Wombat is perfect. Lies as if

resting, lies on gravel road

as if it were cool burrow.
A narrow stream slowly

pools beneath her nose,

blood thickening as it flows.
These hands alone can’t move

her heft; takes bodyweight

to heave her to the verge 
leaving scuff-marks

leading from a scribble

of red in shifted dust.
II: Day Two
It’s 40C. Legs splayed ramrod-straight

she is grounded, overblown balloon:

a child’s absurd plaything.
III: Day Four
Wombat stinks. She is collapsed

onto herself, into herself,

fur coat shucked off evenly,
draped around her body

like an army greatcoat.

A zipper of busy maggots
marks her spine, glisten and seethe

in dappled light. Everything in

and on her moves, everything except her.
IV: Day Eight
Wombat becomes landscape.

A harlequin beetle inhabits the socket

of her eye, its iridescence a small sun.
Her clean-picked skull’s a smooth rock

weathering lichen-yellow.

Her backbone ridge bisects
the dully bleaching fur now

clumped in hummocks matching

paddock grass beyond the fence.
V: Week Eight
Her bone fragments like stone,

pebbled vertebrae scatter over fur

and under autumn leaves, returning.