Poem Written on the First Anniversary of My Father’s Death

Curled on sacks of cypress mulch, their bodies slack with sleep,
           two cats:
One black, one a dirty gray,
Both scrawny and flea-foul.

                        When a boy
Rides by on his pawn-shop
Bicycle, yelling and knocking over garbage cans,

They do not lift their heads.
They do not lift their heads
When the thunder drops its load of stones

Into the rain barrel—.

                                              Of what handsome

Rats must they be dreaming!
What evenings passed in fat
Repose! Not even the wind,

Its cold honed on the hinges
Of foreclosure signs, has edge enough
To cut them from such feast

As they have found; not even the rain
When it comes…if it comes—
Will trouble them.