after jeanette
14 June 2024
it was luscious quiet today, the boys away, no one chastising me.
i dragged Howard’s masonry ladder to the cherry tree.
Choco went with me, climbed above me.
to where the really dark ones are.
he didn’t want me to take the next step on the ladder
he batted me with his paw, claws out.
when that discouragement failed he knocked the basket down
sending me to recollect what I had gathered
he came down to watch me search in the dry cut grass
hoping he wouldn’t find the baby bird I buried there this morning
Blackie brought her in, still warm, surely fallen, his dispatch I hoped a mercy.
no way her parents could get her back to safety.
so i had rationalized the intolerable to save my day,
burying her under the cherry tree to remember her.
then I climbed greedily again
accompanied by my protector, carefully
in full suspicion that cats do see the future
which is why they don’t like suitcases
look concerned when we pick up the car keys
stand on my feet when I am angry and tilting toward a confrontation.
i try to eat more cherries than i bring back
because my mother loved cherries,
would sit eating them silently
Bing cherries, big and as dark as i imagine are the ones at the top of the tree.
it’s a way of atoning that she didn’t get to know that I live in France
which she thought she loved
although she didn’t know it well
or me.
