by JS Gilbert
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?
They say cats bring gifts, wriggling, to
our doorsteps because they don’t trust
us to feed ourselves and so we should be
thankful for snakes, voles, moles, and mice
carried haughtily up the steps but
I’m not the one who falls off the bed.
Still I couldn’t think of a damn
thing to write. Couldn’t catch the bird
in the bush despite the pen in my hand
as he sauntered toward the screen,
robin thrashing in his jaws, and said,
through a mouth-full of feathers,
‘Well?’
I cradled him, fresh from a morning
surveying his kingdom, into my face;
smelled winter beneath his fur,
flowerbeds behind his collar.
Wondered at those who collect these
haughty envoys, risking the ire
of municipal codes and threadbare
trope of crippling loneliness
to surround themselves with smells of
life, now, beyond their grasp.
