Last night, after mid-night,
there was pounding at our door,
a half-dressed woman pleading to lay down,
a cockroach crawling from her blanket,
a small child by her side:
barefoot, in only underwear,
clutching a scratching kitten.

“We’ll find them a place to sleep,”
the young officer said.

Today, an escaped parakeet,
soft, blue, feathery down,
camped out in the fireworks section
of Beaumont Krogers,
where we captured him
and brought him home
to a guilded cage.

Whose Keeper am I anyway?