Pets

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The pets showed us how to be better
than our mechanisms;
they made our brains bigger
of any sentimentality we were bereft of,
and warbled back at us our own despair.
We wanted to be unyielding,
to burst from calm shucks and mature.
The pets, with their silky skins,
supple flaps of sinew, padded feet
and jagged teeth,  directed us there
and they were faithful, submissive, caring.
We fooled around in the shrubs
and swapped piece of music.
When their pens were dirty,
we took out brooms and tidied it up
with a meticulousness  we hardly practised
in our own homes.
We treated their wounds,
hid the skeletons of the dead and
hummed like homo sapiens when they
kissed us renewed, absolved us of our evils.