My orange kitten climbs a tree.  Skinny
        branches bend and sway.  She dangles
        upside down, hangs by a needle-claw of paw.

        My heart blocks my throat like it did
        that childhood evening I saw Suzie Dell dangle
        by her knees from our school’s jungle gym,
        her blue skirt falling past a tanned neck while
        bare legs climbed from pink panties above
        a shadowy man reaching his arms toward her.
        I reach out toward my kitten, lest it fall.

        Nothing scares me more
        than the thought of soft and dangling things
        coming to harm on hard ground beneath skinny
        branches or on twilight summer playworn grasses
        beneath a long ago schoolyard’s jungle gym.

Copyright © Gene Fehler, 2005. All Rights Reserved.