It's Still Life

The Old Woman Without a Cat

the old woman with no cat sits
on the garden step in perfect past tense,
next to daffodils that are going
papery dry and swollen with seeds.

she knows she should snap off their
little dead heads, leave them

headless as if she were a protagonist
in a nursery rhyme,

but instead she looks up at the hollow
blue sky, at one cloud trespassing,
and it’s

a cloud too white. too fat,
and sated. just one. racing ahead.
or maybe left behind, likely

steered adrift, or so thinks
the old woman with no cat.