Thursday, December 5, 2013

MY CAT LIES FULL LENGTH OUT SLACK ON THE GLASS COFFEE TABLE

MY CAT LIES FULL LENGTH OUT SLACK ON THE GLASS COFFEE TABLE

My cat lies full length out slack on the glass coffee table
but for her head poised like a minor sphinx looking
into the long, foggy distances of grey longing
blued by a mood of moving away from things
in a kind of emotional aerial perspective the same
as I’m looking into the open with about as many answers
maybe less than she does. Female feral cat three month
old kitten unfleaed unfixed on facebook I think
I saved a little bit of both our lives that day
I could still drive and got in the car and picked her up.

Took her right out of Rain Dumoulin’s good moon arms
in the embryonic studio of someone who was
learning how to paint to celebrate and counteract
the widow walk dance of her husband’s recent suicide.
What a cruel world that has such lovingly tragic fools in it.

Bang the screen door and we were all the way
back to my red Starfire and you to the back window
to see where you might be going now that
you’ve been captured again all the windows done up
until you learned that I fed you because I intended
to love you and I wanted you to live as an affable familiar
of me who’s got goldfish but they’re awful hard to caress
when you want to reach out and just touch something soft
as smoke wafting across your cheek like the echo of a dream
somebody’s having about being loved in bad economic times
and I was willing to clean up your methane mess for it.

I’m pampering you. You’re living almost exclusively
on treats. If not now when? When do you get a small
special consideration for the emptiness that’s going
to build a little coffin in your heart
and put a picture of me in it like a locket
of Temptations seafood medley singing
softly to you from the tower of Cohen’s song.

Simon’s going to take you. He’s a good man. Loves cats.


PATRICK WHITE

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