Before leaving me in charge of her clowder of cats,
Avis took all of them for one last walk behind the trailer park.
I’ve forgotten how the cats and I fared that week in the trailer,
but I’ll never forget that day in the meadow,
the cats following their owner among the tall grasses,
a spectacle silhouetted in the setting sun,
the tips of eleven tails sticking up in the air.
Author’s Note: (First published in lexpomo.com, a month-long poetry blog in Lexington, Kentucky.)
Gaby Bedetti hikes, takes photos, plants trees, and sings in several choirs. After grad school, where she co-founded the University of Iowa Museum Bulletin, she started teaching at Eastern Kentucky University. She co-teaches Page-to-Stage: Imagining the Military Experience in Iraq. She married a guy she met at a literature conference in Louisville, and together they raised a couple of kids. Her work has appeared in such journals as Off the Coast, Italian Americana, Poet Lore, and New Literary History. She has written a poem every day in June for the past four years for her town’s poetry blog, lexpomo.com.
A Quiet Courage 