That Domestic Animal

My damn cat brings me a dead songbird, wren or finch, I don’t know what it is— I mistook at first its folded grey for a strangely shaped piece of lint in the cubicle beneath my desk—nor which cat for I have two: Cricket with her dense body and stubby legs who jumps down from every shelf so reverberatingly, I call her the Black Bomb, or Ingrid, the quiet Russian Blue, whom I call Gritty because her coat is stealthy with dust. They’re always leaving me offerings—the mouse upon the threshold when I return from some trip, the redheaded grosbeak on the sill— but death is different in the front yard or even on the threshold, than Death on a particular morning, crawling into the house, carrying a warm form frozen in its warm mouth, tongue and tooth salivating a fluff of warble and whistle into a smoothly folded, iced, silenced thing, Death triumphant,affectionate! as if anyone would be happy feeding upon dead songs torn from the air.