Look askance, all you
want, at a people who
draped their cats as
queens, in gold and lapis
and jasper and jade,

or shaved their eyebrows
in lamenting grief when
their whiskered royals
sauntered through Duat to
bask beneath Ra’s passing,

but have you, a lap
among a sea of laps, ever
been so richly blessed by
an ambivalent god brushing
against your shins?