I wept when the rains came so soon,
knowing how he hated to get his feet
wet—now wrapped in a pillowcase
in the cold ground. I wept on the question
of his sleep, the vet closed his eyes, first
the milky blind one, and then the one
he used for pleading. He gave
a small final mew when the air left,
and his dark muzzle relaxed—she cupped
her hand beneath that last sound and
closed his jaw, dark face, dark paws,
ivory and seal, his old dustbag of a body
abandoned at last. We swaddled him
like an infant. Since he’s been gone
every afternoon a tightening in my throat
takes me out past the crumbling incinerator
past the empty hutches, wood blanched
silver by the wind, rusted screens sprung
free, back into the sphere of the lemon, unshaped
so many seasons now, its crown a bramble
of dead branches. Too much fruit kills the life
at the tip of the bough, darkness sets into
the fingers, black hands my daughter calls
them, the tallow won’t reach, no,
it’s flowing into misshapen lanterns
glowing sulfur yellow in the tangle
and thorn. And everywhere the smell
of waxy blossoms, faintly bitter zest
of dew, the whole tree exhaling not just
perfume, but breath of leafmold and
compost—he used to stretch out
like feline Egypt in its aura. Late
afternoon, green air almost cold, and
the black hands strain upward, reaching
trying to wash themselves clean, my life
come to this disturbed earth in the shadow
where cowslips grow, shade-lovers—
my cowslips—like me, paper white,
simpletons my daughter says,
as if it’s vulgar to crave to be
first in your loose lacy whorls—
crowding cyclamen on the mound,
five petals drawn together
like the clasp on a lady’s handbag,
and the color, cherry cider, but she says, no,
darker, more like the hammered
seeds inside a pomegranate, and suddenly
I want to be simple as cyclamen—
pale horseshoe on its split leaf—
a stretched heart—and underground, his small
body hollowing out a chamber . . .