The Trees of St. Louis

I do not miss my mother as I should
The mercurial grease fire of her eyes
The hissing snap of the switch
In her semisweet baritone
Singing,
Father forgive them
For they know not what they do
An echo overlay I hear today
The stray cat mewing behind a car

I miss the sick cat I saved
in my suicidal state I miss her
meeting me like a foundling dog at my door
I miss taking her for walks in the park
Like my child I miss her
waking me with a rough tongue and watching her
lick the cheese off my macaroni
I moved and gave her up to my uncle
Where she died far from me

Sometimes I imagine
he put her back out on the St. Louis streets
Streets sometimes as black as tar,
Broken in chunks you can fly like Frisbees
Streets sometimes littered
with shattered glints of glass
Streets sometimes grease spotted
Worn thin by tires and feet
Streets lined with trees

Sometimes unkept, and nearly wild
Sometimes manicured, and trimmed
Sometimes new and dewy in dawn’s pink
Sometimes splendid in pristine winter wear
Or ablaze with a myriad of autumn’s painted leaves
But from U-City to Creve Coeur
No space is wasted, no corners bare
St. Louis patriots set the scene and
Every patch of grass must wear a tree

Now its 8:15 in Ohio and gray the morning
Shows the pallor of her corn harvested cheeks
A brusque wind tears at the flap
Of my jacket reminding me
to retrieve my coat arms locked,
back to back the frosted fields meet
the struggling horizon, the sun’s first seat
And thinking of my mother
And my cat
What I miss most are the trees