I’ve never seen a live
armadillo, but I drive

Highway 90, where the shoulder’s
littered with the colder,

deader little critters,
getting stiffer and stiffer.

They seem to have weights
like living room drapes

in their bottoms, for they lie
with their feet to the sky.

By God, there’s a lot of ‘em,
fat as stuffed ottomans,

World War I tanks snared
in terrorist warfare,

or small coats of armor
whose knights became farmers.

Julie Kane
from her book Body and Soul
(Pirogue Publishing, 1987)
used with permission of the poet
and with permission of Pirogue Press