Millie Come Home

Part 1 of 3 in a poem about love & incarceration

Even at home, Millie was gone

When she was younger
Millie would be out nights,
rounding up playthings
in the papered up rustle
& dust of the cornfields
& lay them out, loved up,
as hot meals or thank-yous,
in the tender care
of humans.

Or if we’re to be
inhumanly forthright,
like Millie & every
other house cat —
bring them home,
& let them go,
& then only,
sometimes,
see them off.

Trouble was, Millie
sometimes absconded
— a week, sometimes 2
and sometimes longer,
then, 1 day,
a Sunday,
as long as ever,
& then she was gone,
& never returned.

By then the humans
had uncoalesced;
some went hame,
the way they came,
& the ones that stayed
were not the same,
whose…