Grey Squirrel

Ay ey tah ho tah hey*
Grey squirrel lies on the no-snow ground
eyes half closed, tail crimped,
beneath my neighbor’s red maple,
enclosed in a redwood log box of wood chips.
He was fat for the winter he wouldn’t see.

So he shouldn’t have a garbage can end
or slowly sink and skeletalize before my eyes,
I dug in the too soft January earth of my gangway,
measuring the hole by the smallest of my cats, who
squirrel coated, too, watched me through the gate.

Ah-ey-tah-ho-tah-hey
With the chant in my head, I wanted the dark to cover us,
but this shadow spot was not squirrel’s home.
So, I dug again,
this time out front, in full night sight
of all our neighbors--
dug in the root rayed ground of the tree
in the spot of his last gathering.
Balancing his body on the trowel,
I laid the curl-pawed one to earth.
I covered his eyes, head and haunches
and took his tale.

A-ah e-ey tah ho
Ah ya hey tuh hey.
Ron Evans of the Chippewa-Cree
told me that even in the city
he learned from squirrels,
about how to balance on the wires
and live in a bale of leaves
on the tip of a twig.
Maybe the roots of where he lived
would take him back, now.
And Spring would bring him to
the branches again.
I rain him with leaves
And go upstairs to write.
My cat tips and marks my pen with her chin.
She knows how to bury things
to surprise me with later
and how to climb to higher shelves,
to push out ‘what doesn’t grow corn’
as SunBear used to say,
and call to me from behind
the books that remain.
Ah yah ha wey
Ah hey tuh hah ah wey.
Ah yah ha way
Ah hey tuh hah ah wey.

*Apache chant