Requiescat in pace

Sometimes our love roams wild, above the law,
though we would never dare to say as much
lest righteous neighbors show their sharpened claws,
scratch out our good intentions over lunch.

To us it’s obvious who’ll do the deed
and who will fuss the measure of a hole,
where sparrows mass as if to intercede
for all nine lives that moved their stalker’s soul.

A sentimental note, the choice of gloves –
dark-blue, the ones for cutting roses back –
before the practicalities, the shoves,
inelegant maneuvers to the sack;

then, carefully laid out, a towel shroud
where we once bathed, our skin a milky glaze.
To some, such acts are disallowed,
but death stalks round our house and never pays –

now solitary pleasures slip our minds.
Winter hangs in catkins, sinks in paw-prints,
gone are mischievous companions, feline friends;
summer reeks of fingers rubbed with catmint.

Your padded hands around wet clumps of fur
push the old mound down, hessian and pain,
arthritic bones that long since ceased to purr,
cold, rheumy eyes that stared at teasing rain.

I see the faint suggestion of an arch,
walk underneath it, stroking back stray hairs,
press down the gentle needles of the larch,
the essence of their pine still in the air.