Some Speculation on the Grief of Cats
Still grieving for his brother he
lost weeks ago, my cat named Steve
searches all around the house
and in the neighborhood as if
he’ll find him there and bring him home.
He won’t give up his vigilance.
At night in bed I hear him sometimes
howl a deep cry into
the empty dark in case his brother
was there to hear, and call him back.
But in the end he gives way
to the unanswerable night until
the morning when he rises from where
he’d slept at our feet, to do
it all again, to show us how.
Bruce Weigl is the author of over twenty books of poetry, translations, and essays, most recently, Apostle of Desire (2025), Among Elms, in Ambush (2021), and On the Shores of Welcome Home (2019), all from BOA Books. He is currently in Ha Noi, living and working on translating the poetry of Ho Chi Minh with Vietnamese colleagues, an invitation from the Viet Nam Writers Association.
