Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Behold! Today with the help of Marc Porter-Zasada (check him out, his articles are gems which he also reads on Public Radio), I began working my brand new 10" Acer laptop - will I be able to use it during my trip? Who knows? But it may be a link to YOU. Also he found for me that if I press Edit Html I can copy and paste. Hurray! Here's a recent poem.

I Love my Cat

I love my young, sleek cat,
Black, and slippery, white nose, white paws
White chest, the whitest whiskers
And six toes splayed out like sneakers
Swiftly skittering
Along the parquet flooring,
His leaps like morning newspapers
Hitting the sidewalk, his taps
Like paper falling from tables.

My cat’s called Figaro, a name
We innocently thought described his voice
Miowling in seven different languages,
Consisting of the vowels from a to y
And many diphthongs, all in tones
From middle C to screeching Bs
And treble Ds to basest Gs,
With modulations ranging mutely soft
To most imperious, feline fine fortissimo.

A clumsy clot’s my cat, and that’s a fact;
He leaps and misses ledges, knocks down plants,
He slithers in the bathtub, bounds up stairs
Like panthers on the loose, and then slides down;
He tackles tiny twigs and carries them
Like quarry, or he chases beads
Across the floorboards, cutting corners,
His triumph gleaming in his wet glass eyes,
His six toes splaying
While displaying, comic cat,
His polydactyl personality.

But let me here reiterate, I love my cat;
He winds himself around my neck, he purrs
Into my ear, he looks so luminously
At me with his shiny eyes like pebbles washed
By running streams, he waits for me
On window sills and rubs his silky, slinky coat
Against my skin and when he sleeps
He claims my lap or shoulders,
But if I’ve left the house, he finds
My hidden cupboards or my pillow:
Puss, my missing spouse.

LRH 3.28.10

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful! I love my cat too; I have a brother and sister and the guy is the one I really love. He's a clumsy clot like yours, and sleeps on my pillow too.

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  2. 5/17/12
    Figaro my clumsy cat sits at the window or by the closed screen door and the poor sweet lovable joyous mockingbirds who have nested as usual in the tangled bougainvillea over the front door are silenced except for hours of squawks. Is it the male or female who guards the nest from tooth and claw? The door is closed but you can't be too sure, they say. The couple must be under terrible stress, unable to sit peacefully on the eggs singing their hearts out, and the babies will be hatched from their thin shells quite frazzled. I hope they learn to fly quickly and get away from my resident monster.

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