It’s as if a cat is unworthy of grief.
After all, there are so many dying children.
But some nights I pull into my driveway,
still hoping to see him. I look up at the sky
and wonder if it will snow. I examine the tracks
in the yard. Is he in the landscape anymore?
I turn the car off and the cold mends his absence.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.