My cat doesn’t set an alarm, or worry about deadlines. She never checks her bank account (not that she has one), nor does she give much thought to tomorrow; she blissfully sleeps through news and politics, and manages to ignore even bees and mosquitos. None of these are feline concerns. In the drier places beyond her domain, her larger sisters spend their days in much the same way: alternatively languishing in sun or shade, giant gorgeous paws in a pile of slumber, yawns revealing rough pink tongues and ferocious teeth, a cave of kitty breath that tamps itself bank down into another lazy dream.
Her mountain cousin’s clock is hunger, driving her to hunt and pounce, stretch and climb. Fear of deer and hikers, she waits in high places for her moment. She spies from low choked up places, patient. Her gaze pierces dense brush. No fancy feast for her: she is wild and raw as desert sunlight, stealthy as the creep of death, calculating movement with the same keen sharp eyes that back home will sometimes track a bird or noisy squirrel. Her castle is a canyon; her feather bed is a rocky crevice, sweet and hidden as the truth she keeps in feet that pad upon the earth, ears that know the smallest sounds, life that accumulates beneath the nails of her lethal, inscrutable claws.
Last minute, I decided to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo this month, writing a series of prose poems on animals, specifically ones that live near me and in the areas of the Southwest I often visit. This is one of them! This is the link to my NaNo page.
Thank you for reading!
The Poetry Patio 