In which I write a sad poem

Elegy to a fierce creature
     who once lived in the burnt-out, 
     abandoned house across from ours.

There is no poem that I want to write
about the broken bridge of fleshless ribs,
open to the sun, laid bare on the asphalt-

but she was full and furred, once.
She was two star-pointed eyes piercing
the midnight brush on the side of the road.

There was a little girl in a tutu who used
to sneak out breadcrumbs and milk.
There were clumsy hands and greasy pets.

Frame her outside the context of our love
and she was a fierce hunter, a feral mother,
an urban warrior, a short-lived fury.