The Garden Rat

The Garden Rat

Under an arc of liquid ice,

streaking the window behind,

clashing on the canna leaves,

runs a black stripe of being

fast and blurry as

a faint memory passing and lost

in the midst of children’s calling clamor.

It’s the mysterious

Garden Rat.

Every day I don’t see it

move, it’s just passed me,

disappearing behind the trunks

of the crape myrtle, secret

but

disturbing.

I hunch myself defensively

when I reach to pull a weed.

It’s undefined, yes,

but it’s huge.

(For a rat)

I’m sure it has teeth

bigger than these spider eggs

I’m brushing off my glove,

and sharper than

old quarrels.

All summer I worried

and tried to avoid

The Garden Rat,

dark and diseased,

and hiding in the soft shed petals

of the black-eyed susan and

the weeds I was now

afraid to pull.

Then fall came, and the leaves fell.

The cannas crumbled to the ground.

I went one day to rake the remains,

and from behind the mummy of stalks

flashed the mysterious

black and rapid

Neighbor’s Cat;

The Garden Rat.

Pandora’s Cat.

November 2010

Posted for Jingle's Thursday Poet's Rally, Week #32

Image from npr.org  Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images