Evergreen

When I was homeless,
I ceased to believe in poverty.
My headrest a shale of old bones,
stone laceworks my boudoir,
evergreen wine bottles and
smatterings of newspaper my
chamber walls. My mind was a
trash of elements. A waste, perhaps,
of DNA strands as long as a
wingspan, but even vipers have it.
Then—the soft toes of a stray cat,
a rumble in its body akin to my body—
dragged through my salon
into my arms and died.
What fortune in our eyes but
the gift of the current world:
to die while being held tight
by a fool.