After six decades of marriage,
friends with good intentions
suggest a pet: cat or dog for company.

I tell them I don’t want to be responsible 
or worry about another living thing.
Not interested in conversing with a parrot, 
watching tropical fish consume each other, 
running with a mini-pig on a leash,
or changing diapers of a marmoset.

Neither does a puppy in need of rescue appeal. 
As for cats, I don’t fully trust them—
regression to a feral mean seems all too possible. 
I’ll settle for someone else’s black-and-white 
that strays into my garden and leaves parading 
past the window a mouse in its mouth.

I prefer passive activity—watching
an Anna’s hummingbird at the feeder 
warding off competitors, making rounds 
to each plastic flower aperture, sucking up 
liquid sweetness as she goes.

Or the night herons perched in pine trees 
across the creek, spreading wings to dry. 
Listening to an evening chorus of Canada geese 
in formation overhead, sounding like a kennel 
of barking dogs, remembering the sudden

burst of birdsong after we scattered
and watered wildflowers, forget-me-nots
around my husband’s newly set headstone, 
marking year one.