On Little Cat Feet

It’s dead.
Or no, I think, only dying, a leaf only just tinged with brown, clutching the branch. And up, above, a squirrel peers down. And then, up whisks its tail, and with an ethereal ease leaps from limb to limb.
How? I don’t know. Does squirrel keep it inside him; does it hang on to him, whispering and soaring till death plucks him from those unreachable boughs?
Shards of laughter, circles of hands, mud pies? Dusty dolls, plastic ponies, simple smiles, will they not come back? Dying. Dying, and up and higher still the squirrel goes, where I will never go, on branches that can stop the flow of time and the wind that doesn’t mind. And no, I will not give in. Let time pass by, and I’ll be the wind that doesn’t mind. Squirrel lead me, lead me to the land of the poems! All of those things that I’ll leave will sail through the rivers of ink that wind in the tail of a y and though the fog comes on little cat feet, the eagle above flies on, turning the page of the sky