Invicta
Tame two years
and three litters,
one day,
the lean tortoiseshell
disappeared forever.
Too wise for car wheels
or poisoned rats,
she must have
taken herself off
into the shade
of a wooden bridge
grown through
with moss and weeds
or the safe cave
of a rotted willow's trunk
or the proud dark
under a stranger's house.
She was still wild enough
to know better
than to tell us
that something hurt,
and badly.
Kit
Sprung from the cat’s trap,
the kit played dead
in my hands,
from the doorstep
to a shady shock of hay
by the boundary fence.
I’d worried he’d bite
or struggle,
scream
that terrified
baby blood-curdler,
but he was silent,
a solid brindle
ornament,
dumb, still,
when I set him down.
“You’ll be alright, now,” I said
to his black tonic eyes,
to his static fur,
to the mad electric
quiver
of his ears.
He looked past me
to the impossible hills,
the ticking fence line,
and would not move
until I’d gone.
Shaken Down
In the hospital corridor,
the one two of my shoes
on hard lino,
then something
sounds broken—
a thermometer—
I have left people here
in rooms
and cabinets.
They’ve gone cold
in others’ hands.
The red of me
spills
into so many
ball bearings…
Orderlies wheel
prone passengers.
Nurses pass
with busy eyes,
until one pauses
to put on gloves,
coveralls, booties.
She sticks up a sign
(DANGER HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCE)
and calls
for a flashlight,
holds it at an angle
to find beads of me-
rcury lodged in cracks
between wall and floor.
Without a fuss
she gathers masking tape,
an eyedropper,
index cards,
and uses them to
corral what is herdable
into new glass tubing.
Her cards say:
MY MOTHER DIED
WHEN I WAS YOUNG TOO LOVE
What miracle
to approach
naked breakage,
to chase it unafraid,
gather it up
and talk it back down
to something
resembling normal.
