Zoomies

 
He knew our cats
     don’t kill us at night
 
Because, anciently,
     we kept only those
 
Who stayed kittenish
     while growing,
 
Which suggested to him
     why the sudden four-foot leap
 
With rocketing and zooming,
     through the house,
 
And racing through tubes,
     skittering balls and blocks,
 
And scaling great heights
     of furniture.
 
He diagnosed a clear case
     of kitten insanity.
 
Before him, man-mother,
     feeder and protector,
 
They chase invisible mice,
     butterflies and beetles,
 
Play with long-gone
     siblings
   
While hallucinating
     an infant past.
   
    The image is a taken from
    “Leaping Cat” by Debra Hall.
 

Receipt from Half Moon Bay Inn

 
Rummaging for a pencil
   in the glove compartment
 
He came upon a receipt
   for two nights at
 
Half Moon Bay Inn
   and he paused,
 
So still as though
   catatonic,
 
Finding himself
   once again
 
Eating, making love, smiling
   with her
 
That colder-than-expected
   June weekend,
 
When he bought a sweater
   because he’d known
 
He wouldn’t need a coat
   at The Coast
 
(after all,
   it was nearly summer!).
 
She laughed and loved him
   for his certainties,
 
And he replied in kind at being
   always young with her,
 
So near the bull’s-eye
   of his complicated
 
Requirements of love
   by which one moves
 
Along an arc
   of ageless youth
 
To a predictable end
   fearlessly,
 
As long as they
   were together —
 
He started, startled by
   a squirrel on the hood,
 
Peering through the windshield,
   chittering “Are you OK?”,
 
And discovered
   a pencil in his hand.
 
He grinned,
   and tossed it back,
 
No longer needed,
   as she rapped on the window,
 
Bringing him herself
   and a girl’s sweet smile.
 

Man in Sunflowers

 
He suffered a private madness,
   the question “What am I doing here?”,
   always lurking, clinging,
 
An affliction unrevealed
   to others, friend or otherwise,
   a boring, trite obsession.
 
Corn and wheat sped by,
   muddled worries interrupted
   by a solitary figure in sunflowers,
 
Shabby, in dark hat and overcoat,
   looking, eye level, at a single flower,
   staring, in turn, at the sun —
 
A half-second snapshot
   instantly replaced by more
   corn, wheat, sunflowers.
 
“What is he doing there?”,
   he thought, knowing it
   was already unknowable,
 
Knowing he was neither
   bored nor offended by a
   worthy but unanswerable question,
 
Knowing that he was,
   finally freed
   by the third person, singular.