Squirrels 2016 and 1993

One of Three Baby Squirrels

1.

In this summer at the tree

Leaf shapes, sun shapes
from above and below.

In the park gutter a brown scrap,

an animal.  Check to see,
I said to no one, check to see,
I said to how its breath rose and fell.

Together five or six gathered,

messaged a photo and called.
Almost four hours. then it regained
consciousness, a baby squirrel.

its back legs could not move.

2.

Bank statements and some drafts
I have shredded.
I found the squirrel I remembered
in a binder of lists of expenses.

And in an appointment book.

And in a diary entry, in 1993:
 

Two girls in a car called at me that there was an injured animal in the street back at Union.  I went back when I saw their car just went on.

The squirrel was trying to get up.  I got off my bike in the middle of Union but cars went by, over above its head.  It was trying to get up.  I was screaming.  I made a guy help me get the cars to go another way. 

A man from a house brought a rake and tipped the squirrel onto the rake and brought him to the parking.

After it hubbubed down I sat and crouched near while it lay on the grass  & by some evergreen shrub.  Breathing.  I pushed a fly away.

At the vet they said his back was not broken and neither were its legs.  Maybe it had internal injuries or maybe brain damage.

I brought him to my apartment on the bus.  I waited for the bus at the bike shop. I got them to pick up my bike at the vet, and it is there getting a check over and having the brake fixed.

The vet had fed him thin gruel from a dropper, a syringe without a needle.  I found I could not. Olympic Wildlife Rescue phoned.  They said someone would be by.  And I should not try to feed him more. 

I waited.  In the box the squirrel lay breathing.  Now & then he moved some.  A coupld of hours passed. When Olympic Animal Rescue came, he was sitting up in the box.  But it was hard for me to see in there.

To wait for Animal Rescue,

as I waited in 1993 in May
In my apartment on the third floor,
the day was warm,
the apartment was warm and quiet,

and the squirrel sat up in the box.

3.

Near the park gutter in 2016
A United Way worker
another younger fellow
his sister, one arm in a cast

with her boyfriend

all of us gathered
where we waited, lifted
the baby squirrel

over to the tree trunk

nearly four hours
it regained consciousness.
They brought the squirrel

inside my shoebox

to her mother's house.

4.

Look for the mother.
In this summer at the tree.
Leaf shapes, sun shapes
from above and below,

At the scrap there were people

who made cars turn away.
always home all late summer
the squirrel who was
 

the mother, her way down,

her way up, leaf shapes,
shapes of sun.   All late summer.
All that done, the four had

to go together through

the shapes of leaves,
along the gutter one scrap lay,
her heart that felt.

She and the two then had to descend.