Saturday night kitties loll about bathing
in milky blue flickering tv light and shade
as if it were not the end of the world after all
chimneysweep girl Dark Sister furiously
pecking at herself then abruptly pausing
to stare off into deep space quizzical while
Princey the great sleek black head potentate
laps daintily at his own snowy breastfur
and glances up through slit eyes sphinxlike
across the temple of the disinterested moment
at the advertised world apocalypse
9/29/01
Cat on yellow pillow: Franz Marc, 1912 (Staaatliche Galerie Moritzburg)
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5 comments:
love the title, and the poem,
and the painting..
also,
please include 'vadda'
I never noticed before how 'potentate' describes perfectly a certain breed of sleek black headed cats. My old Tilly Tillerman-D'Banjo was one, too.
Vadda and Tilly: definitely Feline Pantheon material.
Very nicely put together in the stream of consciousness structure.
I love observing animals while they are engaged in their routines without noticing us. I ofen find myself imagining what might be in their minds in those moments.
Lucy,
I too regularly engage in the impossible project of reading animal minds.
In this case, the two cats (both of them no longer with us, sadly), were providing a useful lesson by paying no attention to the television forecasts of dire world terrors to befall us in the wake of September 11.
I had no idea what was in their heads, but knew for certain that the End of the World was NOT.
Which came as a relief...
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