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.