Nai-nai told me once,
if she told me a thousand times,
that high pitch mew like a baby's cry
came from a bobcat she'd seen in the wild bush
behind her house on Margaretville Mountain.
And so I learned from her
a fear leading to anticipation of wildlife so near.
Years later,
tilling her garden,
I saw a small grey bird mock the bobcat's mew
and thought of how how everyone who had worked on her house
from that beautiful, but poor village below
had cheated her or seemed to.

Brandywine
9/22/97