Like Mary’s lamb, Betty walked us to school each day.
Athough, the street crossing delimited her hospitality.
She left us, standing her curbside guard as we passed,
rounding the corner to the garden playground tarmac,
launching little ones to the land of rowed rote learning.
The morning ritual drew her celebrity as the cut-tail cat,
the shepherd of the suburban neighborhood children.
She pranced for pets, then skittered past to prod them,
“Don’t be late,” as if urging them to the teachers’ walls,
brick-lined in students armed with backpacked lunches.
And thus she bid the morning watchfully, awaiting 2:42
when full of 2+2 and rainbow-colored painted clothes,
her charges returned to their tri-colored ambassador,
strolling four-footed assured along a territory secured
in pats and giggles, amazement and chase of the calico.
In the gaze of the other 