The dead woman’s cat in the furrows of the garden
does not let herself be picked up
although hungry and thin after five days
with the dead woman and a night in the rain.
It has gone to join the other feral cats
among the junk behind the house. To be outrageously
******. On my way to work I try to entice it
with false friendship, guilt that the dead woman is dead.

On my way home I buy a can of cat food
but can’t find the cat. I let her go
to her fate. Later that night I try again
but there’s a tom waiting in her place.

Maybe I could have saved her if I’d known
her husband overdosed last week. Just maybe,
no more.
I ask the neighbors what happened to the kid.
The kid lives with her grandparents, they just used her for welfare.

I used to say
Somebody dies every day, it’s normal.
Walking through a residential part of town
I frightened a cat into the street
where it was hit by a car.
The car drove on and the cat jumped
high in the air over and over to escape the pain.
I caught it and held it at the side of the road until it died
and left it in high grass behind a house, sorry I couldn’t do more for it.
A young boy on a bicycle stood nearby the whole time
then rode silently away.