Letting the cat out

Jobs joy as Ellesmere Port's Vauxhall plant is saved

Chester Chronicle, 17 May 2012

We scraped aside the mud

that the intervening month

had made of all the turned earth

we had piled on the mound.

Before disinterring

the box, we stopped and listened

for scratching, for mewing,

for any kind of sound.

Two of us straddled the pit

with a fingertip grip on the rim

of the lid, and heaved the box out

with a slurping birthing squelch.

Expecting a stench we rubbed oil of cloves

under our noses and let the cat out.

(c) 2012 Slush poet