The clock falls back and the cat
doesn’t give a damn about the hour.
She howls at five and five-ten; she howls again
at five-twenty and six. She knows there’s no heft
in my silencing voice. Daybreak grit under my feet,
I trip through gauzy dark, bend to feed her as night
backs into gutters and lanes: feral, silent.
The rat of my dream, low to the ground,
had a brown tail the length of a garden snake.
I could smell its breath, the grass-like sweetness.
I touched its feet, a dozen white spiders
crawled across my fingers, birth sac
of light cut free.
