A shade and mold bleached branch
from a live oak marks the spot

where our old cat died. Sakkan, named
by my son after a Mesopotamian god,

bullied our other cats and ate as much canned
food as could fit into his fat grey belly.

I buried him there in the morning; a call came
an hour later: a professor I'd known in college

had eaten a bottle of Tylenol. And then, in the papers,
Derrida, the Papa Luna of meaninglessness, passed

before giving his last unweighty sentence. For no reason,
I recall the view from the Serrano tower in Valencia

a vast landscape of rooftops and sea and mountains. Leaning
against the old stones, my heart pounding from the long,

steep walk, I'd felt death shrink from my shoulders,
a fear, like the childhood terror of darkness, melting

into memory. But now, the memory of that view
does nothing for me. The sun had just risen

over the Mediterranean, a bright belly of a bird
with feathers hot to the touch. Now that bird, wings

at once cramped with age, pitches itself back
into the sea, the light shuttering close. The view

from the Serrano reverses itself, going
from darkness—blackness—to stark, bleached white.

But it's the same effect. You can't see a thing.
The cat cry you hear in the alley below

is the cry you would make if you knew
you were falling.

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