Every day for three years I shared my peanuts
with a small gray squirrel. She had a blond tail.
I never touched her, though she would rest a paw
on my foot.

She was boldness in short fur: tapping at my door
in any weather, carrying two nuts at once,
and wrangling all the intruders.
Language was simple: nuts and water.
She was a reckless force in my flower garden.

The hours spent in her company: me with a notebook,
deadheading, or cracking nuts; her scratching, climbing,
cracking nuts. She ruled the yard and always ate first.
One spring morning she arrived with four smaller squirrels
bouncing in tow—she was the only one who ever touched me.

Most days it was just a few morsels then on with life.
The good times were spent savoring fat peanuts,
lazing in the shade of a certain nook in the old pear tree.

Then it stopped.
Predator? Car?
No sign, no body—I looked.
A body would have eased my mind;

I could have taken her out to the woods,
pried open a piece of the earth,
put her back, peacefully,
layering the ground with my brash flowers.