Poets reflect on their cats

[nolabear]

2. Well hell, I'll throw in one of mine. Not my cats, but a cat neighbor of mine.

Panegyric for a Cat

There’s a for rent sign in the high window
Across the street where the little cat sat
staring down at city bus stop passers-by
and up as barking crows jaunted line to line.
And though we never met
I knew her the way I know all my neighbors,
by the way they go in and come out,
stand on balconies and smoke cigarettes,
rock at windows with cups while steam curls up
like dreams around their distance-softened faces,
by the lights in windows glowing like caged moons
and stars in walkups and foyers and flats.

If I lived in the country, the wild ducks
hurtling v-shaped in the wind,
the caterpillars, coming in and going out
the deer burgling ripe grapes and rose hips
and bird feeders in the snow would mark the seasons.
The sun would reach between the trees
and slant for me a puddle, as, for a while
it warmed the cat, and I knew it by her .
I wonder if, where she is,
she can finally touch the ground
terrorize breakfast, make the earth hers
until it takes her and folds her in, surrendered,
a wild thing gone home at last.