I had wondered about the fate of the animals myself (might chalk it up to raw curiosity, ignorant as I am of wimminly).
That aside, I cannot forbear to compliment you, Ann, on a truly praise-worthy poem. A curious side-effect of it, or proof of its resonance rather: the prospect it describes came into my head throughout the day when I least expected. I found I could never be bored...

Though worked to death, bored I was not--
I had your poem's chow for thought
And chewed on it a lot through toil.
Sustaining me, it did not spoil.

Erik, one of the things I hope to find in others' poems is what I call "head-food"; I am delighted that you have found it in mine.

They were dehydrated, as they had drunk up their water from their bowls, and could not get out of the house to find water. They were treated at a local animal shelter, and discretely adopted out. After all, they had done no wrong, considering their circumstances. All of them had been well cared for by their owner.

The man who died had no local relatives. He had a rich aunt in Florida who was about 90. This whole event did not make the newspapers, as it would have sullied Maine's reputation as "Vacationland".

I would gladly take a vacation in a district so enlightened. Thank you, Douglas; that made me happy.

These are all wonderful.
Here's my 2 cents' worth, from my last book:

LIMITS OF MY KNOWLEDGE

Along the beach the footsteps wend.
I do not know where things will end.

You found yourself another friend.
I do not know why things must end.

Researchers tell us time can bend.
I do not know when things will end.

The plots of all the movies blend.
I do not know how things will end.

I've seen the way my white cells trend.
I only know that things will end.

PS: I think Ann distinctly wins!
I've always figured that if I died alone and nobody noticed, I was cat food.

I wish I had something to contribute. I just want to say how much I'm enjoying this thread. (Perhaps I have a strange sort of mind.)

These are tough acts to follow, no doubt. Yet I fancy this Kyrielle is sufficiently dark anyway.

Birds cease to fly, dark has begun
that waits no more for any sun,
that wrests warm life from fingertip:
Death, with his finger to his lip.

The dark world where the race shall die
leers in at windows, turning spy,
hisses in shivering winds that nip.
Death, with his finger to his lip

mutes all the voice, benumbs the breath,
the wayfarer succumbs to death
upon the tail-end of the trip,
Death, with his finger to his lip.
s

The River Children Come of Age

Those first years we lived above the river,
Christ, we were insatiable,
screwing our heads off in the kitchen,
on that floor you stenciled yellow,
and gave no thought to children
or the future, or the dead;

and, indeed, the dead
in time came to the river,
and the ghosts of children,
demanding and insatiable,
calling for that yellow
kitchen

within this new six-burner steel kitchen
where everything that lives is dead,
and a silent cat stares through slits of yellow,
and its owners fear the river;
and only the night is insatiable,
and there are no children;

and the friends who laughed like children
as we caressed each other’s spouses in the kitchen,
six of us, one Christmas night, stoned and insatiable,
they are all dead, those others, dead;
the last one buried somewhere upstate near a river
last October, on a day the red and yellow

leaves made crazy patterns like that yellow,
red and green linguini we hungry children
hung to dry above the river
in a whirling, smoke-filled kitchen;
the lights of passing barges glinting off the dead,
flat, cold and bottomless water, insatiable

for everything that one time seemed insatiable;
and eventually the skin will yellow
and the nerves below the knees feel dead,
and we are again children,
huddled in the kitchen,
shades pulled against the river

as a low, late sun tints the kitchen chrome and yellow;
slanting off the river, crying that the dead
are all insatiable; and that there are no children.

Too well-crafted to be depressing, Michael. It gives a little too much delight.