Return to the Winter Garden

My new cat has enticed me

to come and sit with her

right now, in our courtyard garden.

Bright orange, the trumpet creeper 

is climbing my neighbour's tree.

Not my job to tell him, and I'm sure

he can see, so I settle back to enjoy.

Once, a huge monitor lizard

climbed it too, and lay all afternoon

along a branch. Earlier today

I heard the fat dove coo,

that lives over there. Luckily

my cat, Selene, doesn't hunt – not

if it means scaling fences. She

is no longer young. Nor am I.

It's a lovely, sunny winter afternoon,

not so cold as yesterday. A plane

drones lazily over. It's nearly four years;

I hardly remember the pain of them –

those years of coming here to my garden

and your large absence meeting me. 

And in noticing how I don't remember,

I do remember – and I turn from that

into today, and peace, and my new cat.

I'm linking this poem to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #311