A smoke-grey cat with long legs
showed up at our house long ago.
One of many wayward strays tucked
under the rafters of our little
brick colonial with the pink
bathroom, dusty chandeliered
dining room, where children
practiced piano in the corner and
stretched the phone cord around
from the kitchen to conduct
the business of adolescence
for anyone to hear. Mother
taught school then and Father
made dinner, and we rode
bikes to marching band
practice, with trumpets
and horns strapped on
imaginatively before the days
of soft cases with straps, and
no one to drive us places.
It was an in-and-out-house,
a brassy, bossy, laughy-cry cry
place,
Mother made friends with
the smoke-grey cat, really
the only one of us to give
it the time of day. Naming
it was beyond most of us
those busy days, so at a noisy
dinner table one night, Mother
said: “let’s just call it Tall”.
And we did, for its short time
with us. Our house was
a way station for Tall, who
slid in and out for the
occasional meal, but navigated
the chaos of other animals
and children, and sometimes
screamy grownups with zen
like calm and ballerina grace.
Tall stepped around and over us all,
traversed crooked alleyways
the many neat hedges that criss-crossed
the topography of our suburban
neighborhood in the mystery of
her days. Discovered at the edge
of the busy road around the corner on a
Tuesday afternoon, seemingly
unbruised, but sure enough gone,
Tall posed in a Grand Jete, as if leaping
brilliantly into her next life.
That cat made a graceful exit.
The children and other animals
Went on about their busy teenage lives.
Mother mourned quietly behind
closed doors while grading papers.
Father dug a deep grave
upon which a white Peony
flourished for years to come.
Early Morning Poems 