Her black bugged 
eyes peer out between hosta 
and hydrangea in the flower bed.

Mottled brown fur, blood
vessels inked red on the paper- 
thin maps of her ears, 

a whiskery nose twitch.
When she jumps away, one foot
flops grotesquely behind.

She seems unbothered by the dead
weight, a burden born,
perhaps, by narrow escape

from a tire’s tread or the jaws
of a fox. This morning she’s alive –
how lucky.