Squirrel Hill Poem by Ernest Hilbert

We wake to find our outdoor cat is dead.
Some drunk speeding up the block, no doubt.
The wheel's blow was so hard it spread
Her out like an old rug, rung her life out,
Speared her clavicle through the black fur,
Still lustrous, as when she was quick. She's splayed
Like a star stuck on the black sky of tar.
We feel, a moment, as if she might still stir.
But gone now, as if she never begged or played.

I scoop her tenderly as I'm able,
Our bundle of bony fur and blood—
Who posed on the porch beneath the table
As I read, lolled in the sun, left prints in mud—
Into a glossy black trash bag and carry
Her around the house to where we will bury
Her, where the yard gives way to a garbage-
Swollen gully and bare lot behind a ledge
That falls away a bit more each rainfall,

And knowing I'm nothing I scowl
At the sky, painfully blue, cold, and far,
New moon's sliver so clean it could slice me in two.
I realize, consoled, she was our dark star.
Once done, we're colored with soils and clays.
There is no more to do, so we go on, through
Our uncertain passage, through anarchic days,
Our time, and our love, too small, in past tense,
In the ever-shrinking lands beyond the fence.