Reverse Gardening for Cats

All mouths pinkly
Mewling and rough tongued
Swallow quietly, wrap lithely around the corners that say house.

The motherwort has barely rooted
By the stone where
Phoebe's queerly trolled body once
Hollowed in, six yards from
The peach tree that to this year
Had fruited fully, promiscuously,
But this spring felled half its own branches

And bitterly grudged one withered peach
In memory of Gaud, who was tamped under dirt
By my then-lover.
Strychnine, he said,
Strictly nine lives.
His blood tipped so politely
On my bedspread, set curses to the neighbor who

In his poison garden stole neatly
The striped foot of a dream I once had of Him.

Somewhere in the dark yard is the whispered answer
Of how she, untoothed and bony hipped
Finally fell away.




This poem is dedicated to my neighbor, Jimmy, who ten years ago delighted in killing my cats, through poison, trapping and who knows what else, but now through some miracle now has his own cat, Kearney.