Daily Poem: April 24

The pets



We had pets when I was a child:
A kitten adopted from the Animal Rescue League
who hunted and could be vicious, orange and striped
and eternally inconvenienced,
who slept upon you faithfully if you fell ill.

Two horrible, translucent frogs we watched evolve
in a kit my mother bought at the toy store on Route 28.
Mindless or insane, who thumped insanely
at night against the sides of their enclosure
until one ate the other, like Jupiter or Ivan.

A hamster, then an escaped rabbit that I captured
in my first year of college, probably
because I missed the cat and was terrifically alone.

It’s good to have pets.
To confront yourself and not yourself daily in another form,
in the ways of another life.

I think about them when my poetry or my hands
pulse with worthlessness,
when I can’t seem to speak plainly enough,
and the stillness of a quiet room
envelops me in a torrid deafness. I remember:

These forms you loved, for which you wept,
are reason enough.