Photo Source: HERE.
The neighbor’s
dog killed
our kitten. He’s an old
speckled
hunting hound
who hobbles
painfully
through a
large fenced yard.
Our kids
feed him handfuls
of bone
shaped biscuits
through the
fence
and run back
and forth
calling his
name.
The kitten,
slender and spry,
climbed the
fence, curious,
and the old
dog found
youth
coursing through his
veins. It was quick, they said,
she didn’t comprehend the threat,
he acted on training and
instinct.
The daycare
children who played
nearby watched
it all go down.
Crying, they were hurried
inside, to
where the classroom bunny
sat safe
in its cage.
We weren’t
home at the time.
Later, when
I sat in the grass snacking
with my
boys, the neighbor called me
over to break the news. We stood there
on opposite sides talking for a long time,
our conversation divided by the fence.
He
was apologetic, I was trying to figure
out what to
tell the kids.
“I didn’t
think he still had it
in him,” my
elderly neighbor observed.
We talked,
as usual, about the woman
who
owned this house before us –
born here and died here at the age of ninety-seven –
and about
the neighbor’s own twin brother, a monk
in his
seventies still making plans to teach overseas.
The
cat was handed back
over the
fence, stiff and oddly heavy
in a plastic
bag. I put her in a box,
then went to
wait for the school bus
to crest the
hill, delivering
my happy
children back home to me.
//
The farmer
has started cutting down
the dried
brown corn that shines golden
when the sun
hits just right. Any day now
the field
across the street will be empty
again. The harvest feels like an inevitable
end, the cutting down of it all and already
I feel a sense of anticipatory loss.
I want to be
home when the combine comes,
to witness
the transformation. Then
there will be the long wait of winter
before seeds are sown in the quiet earth
and green shoots break through again.
This is our sweet Tiger who loved to curl up and nap in my Asparagus fern.
Linking with Jennifer Dukes Lee for #TellHisStory.
Kelly,
Oh…so sorry about your loss; what an adorable kitty…praying comfort and for God to continue to give you hope…lovely poem….thanks for inspiring my most recent post http://soulstops.com/post/2014/09/23/Sometimes-trust-looks-like-holding-on3.aspx