The Cat's Song
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.
Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.
You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?
Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.
Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word
of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.
Marge Piercy*I got this idea from Woolly Mutts, who posts poems on Mondays.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Wednesday Poem & Picture *
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2 comments:
OOooooh...nice choice. I love the line, "Come I will teach you to dance as naturally as falling asleep..."
We'll bring poetry back to the masses yet!
An old friend of mine, Brock, had a cat named Pierre. Pierre hated me. He would hiss whenever he walked by. Once, after I shaved off my beard, (This was in high school) Pierre ran by me, stopped, came back, looked at me sideways, then suddenly hissed & ran off. My disguise hadn't fooled him!oyj
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