Cat

Cat

Don’t wonder where she goes

once she leaves the silk cover of your pillow

pushes her feral crown through the open window.

Don’t wonder about her jangling tags and flattened ears,

the two-inch pink scar across her thigh that remains hairless,

the dewclaw yanked, incisor broken.

Don’t wonder about the trash in the neighbor’s yard,

her papery tongue lapping up fish blood and liver,

eviscerating the porous raw heart of a chicken.

Don’t wonder if she’ll kill a mouse—crunch its marrow bones,

suck its doomed remains, revel in the borrowed tang of death

that follows all living things.

Don’t imagine the barn owls and hawks, their silent descent

and fetid feathers. And don’t imagine the coyote,

its glittering hunger, sunken shoulders and embossed ribs.

Don’t concern yourself with the old Shepard

that moved in across the street, its lunging maw

and blind opalescent eye.

Don’t imagine your neighbor’s faceted voice yelling damn cat,

the pop and whir of his pellet gun felling jays and finches

from the almond trees next door.

And especially, don’t imagine the sleek Mercedes,

its grey clouded windows, oversized tires.

Above all, don’t wonder about the day you’ll call her name,

clink the teaspoon against the can of Fancy Feast, and you’ll wait,

the silence a wedge of emptiness,

and your heart—all its arteries and ventricles—

will know you can’t save her, how there’s no holding

life in your hands.

—Catamaran Literary Reader, Vol. 7, Issue 3