Willows

A great steel claw
Lifts their dismembered bodies.
No more their shimmering
Tresses to fall like water
Whispering summer songs.

The air above the torn earth
Gapes like missing teeth.

Slaughtered children of water,
Who will now drink
Dry the swimming earth?

Sitting in your outstretched palm,
Concealed by shimmering,
Lulled by whispering,
A cat in my lap
Purring like an engine,
I read C.S. Forrester
All afternoon.

Cat and tree are gone,
House is sold,
Memory grown old
Draws me to muse.
So it goes with memory.
And a walk is less
For lack of a tree.