Another Dead Wombat Poem by Francis Duggan

Another dead wombat lay on the road side
Under the wheels of a speeding car he must have died
Another dead wombat and too few who care
That these indigenous creatures already quite rare.

No more will he graze in the paddock nearby
When the face of the moon shines in the starry sky
And defend his borders and for the right to mate fight
An do the things all wombats do in the night.

No more at daybreak will he return to the glen
To his home remote from the houses of men
And free of disturbance where rank scrub abound
Sleep for most of the day in his hole in the ground.

Another dead wombat it does seem a shame
They lived in peace here till the white people came
Lying dead on his back by the narrow road bend
Will man built cars of his species be the end?

He lay on his back with his feet to the sky
Far too many of his kind in this way now die
And what is said of the Dodo in some future day
As dead as the Wombat some even might say.

His kind have lived in this Country for thousands of years
Yet for another dead wombat no shedding of tears
And tonight he won't graze in the paddock nearby
When the face of the moon shines in the starry sky.