The cats in the neighborhood—strays, gray
as the gauzy in-between of dawn
and sunrise—lounge open. October, and

if they know winter’s coming they
don’t show it. I looked for them the first months
I noticed, checked beneath the car

before driving wherever it was I felt
meant to go, and, now, no: the car is black. Nothing
is an omen—not paths beneath ladders,

hotel rooms on the thirteenth floor, how
the nest was suddenly empty, the robin chicks half-de
composed puffs in the shadeless heat

of the front lawn as our first daughter slept
her first months upstairs. It’s easy enough to
enjoy—the search for hooks, ridges on which
to hang the fingerprint-thick things we come

to call hope or faith, both: there’s a truck
down the block, red or maroon, some almost color,
each Sunday it’s gone, pre-dawn till noon

then another week passes: under that
they congregate, sprawled, pawing its shade, twitching
their serpentine tails. Who knows they

don’t rest beneath the certainty of a bigger
thing’s going, awaiting the rumbling that means
one world’s end, one comfort’s ceasing

like nights coming faster, that hard pm
autumn navy + me whispering, telling myself
in the startling dark I saw you coming.