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