Letting the Cat Out

 

Blue Cat Two White Cats Pink Bird

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE CAT IN THE FOREST

I hear the cat’s voice, but the air is too thin to hold it.
It is another fairy tale, and the cat is under a spell.
The scene is a forest, as it always is, and I don’t know
how I got to a forest anyway.

The point of the story seems to be vanishing among
the trees, and the cat’s voice, too, until I am sure
I was mistaken, because the last page is missing.

The old dread has not yet settled down, and I don’t
expect it to. I suddenly realize I am writing—I am
making this up—it is all my own doing,

The cat’s voice is what I need to guide me through
these deepening trees—but where did the cat go?
Where did it take its path of mewling? How will I save it—
or it save me? How will I ever know the ending?

 

 

 

Cats Love With Their Eyes

  


HOUSE OF WEB AND DUST

Cobweb Lady
lives in her large house
of web and dust.  Her windows are filmy.
Her cats groom themselves endlessly.
                  .
She sits in her gown of velvet,
reading diaries.
Everything is written there.
                  .
All day she recreates memories.
All night she suffers their transformations.
She has no energy for the spiders
or their works of art.
                  .
The spiders work around her,
patiently busy,
making the dark-house corners elegant.

 

 

 

Two Real Cats Looking Through The Torn Curtain

 

BODIES OF CATS

Bodies of cats line the winter streets. I counted
three this morning. Their death spread over the
city. My regret exaggerated them. I could not
shake their presence. I did not want to look at
gutters—brief flecks of orange, shapeless gray—
somewhere, their mourners, oblivious yet.

Tonight on the news I hear of pileups in the fog—
black ice, black snow, three dead. I turn my atten-
tion to randomness, grow vague and distracted,
let detail slip by me with no meaning, give up
the symbolism for awhile, write this poem as if
it means something I do not want it to mean.

_____________________

CAT TIMES NINE

on the eighth life
the black cat lived
albeit with a limp
and a broken miaow

but he had yellow eyes
that slit the dark
and electric fur
to sting the stroker’s hand

he reached the eighth
life of his owner’s mind
to roam beyond the
adolescent now

wiser than death
superior to caution
courting more peril than before
testing his own ninth evolution

                       
(prev. pub. in Of Cats Mini-Chap, 2002)

 

 

 

His Own Self

 

 

 

RURAL

A wood fire in the
                       old black stove,
a saucer of milk for the
                             old black cat.
fire-shadows
             lapping at the walls.    

  
                       
(prev. pub. in Of Cats Mini-Chap, 2002)

 

 

 

Teddy Bear Cat Certificate No. 0000.1

 

 

THE CHILD PRODIGY
After Didier Delamonica, 1950’s

leaping, dancing, amid painted cats
and blue music of red violin
in hands
of floating child
with
flowers
and bouncing balls
of light and imagination
where nothing
falls
it is
a
masquerade
for the sky
the cats think they
are falling,
but they are only dancing
to the practice violin of
the prodigy child
who is a mischief maker
filling the dream sky
with painted cats
leaping,
dancing,
to the music
of the red violin
in the hands of the floating child

 

 

 

 We Are Ours

 

 

EDITH SODERGRAN AND CAT

Holding a cat
in a rare existent photograph
a smile on her mouth
the cat upside down in her arms
its tail like a belt across her dress.

One can see it is a heavy cat,
one paw pulled free,
she wants us to see
how she loves the cat.

The cat’s ears are up, and its eyes
look away from her smiling mouth,
one can see it will soon squirm free
of her and this long-dead photograph.

___________________

FROM THE BLUE TIMES          

Full of your mystery, the symbols lying around like
cats, all the empty bottles shimmering in the light of
this uneven hour, how true you are, leaning into your
old favorite clothes as if you had no body.

You are lyric where it shows, all the songs of your
mouth filling the house with singing. Why don’t you
prepare the meaning for him? He has no words. You
are strange. He is afraid of you, so he stays. He loves
melodrama.

You stroke the ceramic animals and rearrange the
faces on the wall, all those women, huge and beautiful,
that you have found in galleries and sidewalk fairs. It
is so simple. You are all of them though he looks at
their abstract poses and does not know you.

Now you are large as a distance, you enter and enter
yourself for finding and there are the blue times and a
cellar of endless wine, a loveless guitar leaning there
for finding that you pick up now and then as you would
an old and favorite possession.

 

 

 

 The Point of This

 

 

POINTLESSNESS

The point of this is pointlessness,
I keep trying to explain.
You, as vague as usual,
stare away in your other direction.

Take words, I say, throwing you a few
in broken sentences.
But you, still in love with cruelty,
turn up the volume of your deafness.

Let the cat in, I suggest,
let the cat out,
let it in,
let it out. Damn cat.

You, of course,
have no use for cats
though cats love you
with all their eyes and sidle up to you.

I am bereft, I plead.
Take this silence,
so tiresome,
I don’t know how to say it.

You open a page of light,
read it
with your lips,
and make a revision.

I drag you along in my conversation,
I need your provocation,
I need the way you look at me—
your un-reach-a-bil-ity.

You turn away from the
immaculate mirror of your face,
open the door
and let the cat out.

 

 

 

Let The Cat In Let The Cat Out Let The Cat In

 

SNOW WALTZ

They are the perfect followers of each other. It is a
waltz. Outside it is snowing. They leave the doors
open. They praise the music for its permission. Even
their cats share an old preferred opinion.

They whirl and catch smug glances of themselves
in the heavy mirror with its gold veins. And never
are they breathless—winter has a long way to go.
Their cats waltz with moths in dreams of their own.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

CO-MISERY
—Joyce Odam

Well, what of love,
that old complaint—
not what it is,
but what it ain’t.

Oh, cats that yowl
upon my fence
with so much true
significance,

with unrequited love
like that,
I’d holler too
If I were cat.
 

(prev. pub. in Poets’ Forum, 1997
and Of Cats Mini-Chap, 2002)              

______________________

If it’s Tuesday, this must be Joyce Odam, bringing us songs and other tales of cats—cat-tails—and we deeply thank her for all of that! Our Seed of the Week has been “a cat was standing…”, and Joyce’s cats are standing, sitting, dancing, hollering, endlessly going in and out the door, and sleeping by the old black stove. That’s pretty much the life of any cat, yes?

Our new Seed of the Week is “What These Rocks Have Seen”. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

 

For more about the art of Didier Delamonica, see www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2010/11/didier-delamonica.html.

______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

—Public Domain Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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