Marking Your Spot
He
hands me his latest find, a bookmark, photo of a cat,
calicoed
and turned towards the camera as if posed.
The
tree-edged yard framed by the window
that
back-lights the translucent vein-webbed ears.
It is
a fancy cat, with a beribboned neck.
Loved
enough to be photographed.
Like
Fancy the cat, who lived in the house Eric and I bought on 10th Street,
and who
rests in our backyard.
I had
been told by the previous owner at the closing on the house
where the
unmarked grave was located.
Among
a thicket of sweet shrub. Or was it
forsythia?
Don’t
dig too deep.
That
next summer, warning forgotten,
I
found where Miss Mildred and her daughter had placed Fancy.
A dark
stain in the soil of the forsythias I was splitting out
stopped
me from laboring further.
Now, tucked
between the edge of the patio
and
the row of Japanese privit
that
years ago replaced the forsythia,
a
remnant of marble, half hidden in the underbrush, to remember.
For Jim McGuire
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