God Save the Cats and Bluebirds

They came leaping out of the loam, screaming and fleeing
for the fern as i mashed the compost with a metal rod
because they want to live, too,
then it was war: There are more, I surmised, in the trees,
the loft, the crawl space (among the enigmatic spiders),
in the attic, Christ, can they fit through the mint-thin vents?
Whichever, whatever, I boned up on
zappers, traps, poisons, and that Sunday,
God save the cats and bluebirds, 22 Pico got rigged
and the scourge wound down like toy trucks.
I shoveled them in a bag and set it on fire.
There must have been a witness, in a tree or bush,
to this bigot, this Nero in his perfume cloud.
Who would have thought? Six burning rats smell as sweet as any garden.

-- Brady Rhoades