The Squirrel
I thought the squirrel had died inside the tree so I poked at it
with a stick. It didn’t move, so I poked inside the hollow
I thought it was trapped in, poked it again. Something grabbed my stick
tugged it with teeth and tiny hands, and so I pulled
the stick back out. Weeks later
three tiny tails snaked out of the hole next to the first squirrel’s
twisted and wrapped around their mother’s tail as though
they had to cling to her even out here. I never saw
their little faces, never saw anything but the tails
growing thicker and redder and fluffier with each day.
The mother would only come out at night
to gather food for them, I never saw her leave her post.
I spread crackers with peanut butter for her in the kitchen
carefully placing them just below her nest as an offering
a plea for forgiveness.
One morning, all four tails were gone. The hollow
gaped at me, abandoned, from my old birch tree.
I put more crackers in the garden, put them in the branches
near the hollow, chased stray cats from my yard and
kept the dog inside, but I never got to see those little squirrel children
never got to see who had made their first home in my yard.
___________
Holly Day
Review by John Dorroh
This poem makes me think about the amount of unseen animal activity in the backyard during the night. The evidence is there: seed-packed scat tells me that coyotes are hanging out. More reason to make sure that our cat stays inside at night. The tops of our tomato plants chewed off, along with the baby tomatoes. The impatiens plants that disappeared, even the ones that are in planters high off the ground. We don’t often get a full view of the animals out on our property, and this poem reminds me of that fact. When I do have an occasional close-up of something phenomenal, I don’t rush to find my cell phone to take a picture. Instead I marvel at the incident and feel somehow compensated for any inconveniences that they might have caused.