This morning
when the sky was wisps of cloud scraped against blue,
I let my cat outside.
I heard her hop through the backyard grass
and I sat back down to read about
local bees disappearing.
Scientists were baffled,
whole hives gone,
leaving only a dozen dead bees
as evidence they once lived here.
Pesticides or fungi were chasing them off
to other counties with other chemical sprays and ecologies.
I looked out my window for comfort.
I didn't see my cat.
I watched the poppies and lavender submit to the breeze.
I felt the wilderness of the world through the glass,
even as the car horns and the screeches of street trains mingled with the wind.
I heard a faint mew from the backyard door.
As I opened it to let her in,  
I saw my cat batting at two dead hummingbirds.
I shooed her away from them, and peered closer.
No longer quick, in death they looked like any bird;
only emerald feathers and needle beaks told me what they were.
My cat had never been able to kill a hummingbird before,
Though she’d tried.
A hummingbird was always too quick for her.
But now she had gotten two?
I looked at my cat, who licked the feathers off her paws,
Then looked again at the beautiful, tiny, weightless bodies.
They must have been mating when they were killed.

------- Author's Notes -------

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