Squirrel Girl

An excerpt from "Patches".

She is there.
Lens pointed and still,
135 mm, focused on the cement steps.
Blue shorts, slouched back in a
foreign t-shirt,
bare skin quivering in anticipation

They always come.
The one called Stumpy,
and the tiny one who forgot to grow.
Dinky.
She named them.

Stumpy was a baby when she first saw her
cowering in fear and pain,
up by the house in the sunshine,
her tail cut off and a front paw bleeding.
She threw her paws over her eyes.
If I can't see you, you can't see me.

And all the compassion in the girl's heart
couldn't take away the baby's fear.
She knelt to whisper to it,
but it turned and scampered away,
leaving behind bloody stains, from the missing tail,
on the patio

The other squirrel she called Dinky,
 because it was deformed,
with awkward legs and a twisted body,
and some days the baby thing could
barely walk.

It hobbled to the front steps, thin and haggard,
ragged fur and twitching ears,
to nibble the seed and the dried corn
and the acorns the girl set out for it.

Weeks of watching and feeding,
camera waiting,
sitting cross-legged on the doorstep.

Dinky filled out in time.
Grew a bit.
Has an unbearably sweet head now
and eyes that watch the lens,
the friendly lens and the black hair behind it.

Stumpy is assertive,
has escaped the clutches of the hawk,
the teeth of a barking dog.
She is fat and determined
and sits and stares into the windows from
atop the wooden fence.

Dinky is happy,
unafraid -
loves the camera.
A Canon T2i.
Loves the tiny seeds in his paws
and the crisp sunflower pods
and the patterns of acorns
laid out in front of him.

He is not afraid of Stumpy.
He is not fat like Stumpy.
He is sweet, like the girl
who cares for him.

Stumpy eyes the tiny enemy,
chases him off, an inch or two.
Turns her back on the lens
then pretends not to notice
the enemy eating right beside her again.

Click and whir.
Focus and still.
A lifetime, a gallery,
for the Squirrel Girl.