Wouldn't want to waste her?

“After the cancer got down in his bones, old Bill

didn’t want much to kill — not even on the wing.

Still, he did have that crack young bitch Pointer Belle,

just now getting round to her best, her prime-years savvy,

Would she be the wrong damned creature ever to waste?’’

— From “Well, Everything,’’ by Sydney Lea, a former poet laureate of Vermont. He lives in Newbury, Vt.

A ruffled grouse, one of the most popular victims of New England hunters in the fall. The poem talks about grouse hunting.

The Connecticut River from Newbury, Vt,

Marker of former bridge in Newbury.