I have been trying to understand
whether this life is what we burnish for the next.
Or will we be undone.
Last week a feral kitten found me, and now,
mottled with ringworm,
she moans in quarantine in my kitchen
and hugs a catnip mouse made of felt,
A scrawny, contagious cat in a kennel—
she could be my heart.
Which is to say: yowl, darkness, prison.
Which is to say: aria, nocturne, home.
Which is to say: pushing words around,
the in-box and the out.
I named the cat Simone de Beauvoir.
Is that the name of my heart?
I don’t even like cats,
which she pretends not to know.
What does my heart pretend not to know?
Working at love
means abandoning the burnishing.
When I first saw her almost dead in the street,
I sat down and waited.
She circled me, coming closer,
until I was stupid and put out my hand.
The two of us in the middle of the street.
How could she think I know anything,
sitting in the middle of a street?
Now near the end of her sentence
she scratches the plastic kennel to get out.
What could she know?
Which is to say: need.
Which is to say: fear.
So many poems about the next life.
To make the poem itself a moral act.
Which is to say: heaven.
Which is to say: a larger room.
from Love Song With Motor VehiclesFind it in the library
Copyright © BOA Editions, Ltd 2003
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of BOA Editions LTD.