The Death Of The Female Cardinal Poem by Bill Grace

The cat did not understand
Our revulsion at her trophy
That the victim had a personality
As fully developed as the huntress
Only the bird lacked a name.

I knew by intuition's power
There would be an unwanted cost
To the kitty's here again - gone again meanderings.
A cat must be either in or out
So when she would come home wounded
I would obsess over her.

It was the ever growing magnitude
Of the goriness of her trophies that stirred
A primal fear within me of song bird corpses
That magnified death's sovereignty.

The kitty will kill again
I will grieve her prowess
And the fact that frequent food
Has not slacked the sharpness of her claws.
The hunter and the hunted
A cycle to be repeated
Long after these words are gone.