Cat's got my tongue

While sitting outside

on the back porch

on a summer afternoon

in my mix-matched

cushioned lawn chair

enjoying a good new book

unsure if the sun will stay

Out.

I relax,

with my feet in the bluegrass.

Though, it's not a book

that you can fly through,

each page is a mental push-up.

You know the kind, I'm sure-

a bicortextual brain strain

with flow charts that clog.

When way up in the sky,

a small Lear jet flies by,

and I sit in its path,

it growls and is too

high

to even notice little me.

My cat joins me,

with her

un-in-purr-upting company

kneading affection.

A little tawny finch lands

on the rock fountain.

He performs his

flappers dance gaily, his aria flawless,

unabashed,

cleanly and

splashfully exits stage left.

We both watch,

she cackles

and I wonder

why the little bird doesn't care

we're both right there,

staring rudely, ogling even

at its feathered tweet show.

And those angry raven parents up in the pine

are screeching at their latest son,

again.

Impatiently, they squawk, he walks up the drive-

they are fed up with him, I know

even though I don't speak crow.

And even now, at full-grown, a juvenile-

He's more than slow,

we think he was dropped on his

egg-head,

that's what I heard they said.

A helicopter hovers around above wide

oval circles, chopping up the sky

like a Chinese chef, banging cleavers.

It is looking

for something or someone specific,

that is why

it's also called an ‘eye in the sky’.

Hovering just above the electric lines

it bangs, beats, and blows too low, unpleasantly.

Calmly, my cat licks her butt,

unafraid, she knows,

this flying heap of a beast

is just a loud hunk of metal made

by mere man, outside toys.

The leaf blower next door

dies down,

settling the matter

of fences and foliage,

spreading the abundance, she perks her ear

at the trembling leaves trying to run and hide.

From Inside

the deafening sudden thick silence

a grumble,

a rumble grows…

My cat jumps up

on her pads.

Looking up-she crouches low.

In a flash I realize-

it is thunder

and I wonder,

how she could know

to be scared,

although

the crow

still stands stark still, crookedly.

After a brief flash , I decided, I will go

hide

inside.

Now my cat is buried deep

under the bed

where she fled

just as soon as the monsoon

drum rolled into town.

Now wide-eyed and with electrified hair

I think the whiskers may be overkill.

How she chooses her fear

not by what she hears

but by what it comes from…

She is not so dumb

even without a…

She has no fear for what is Man-Made-

cat's got my tongue,

in cheek,

I peak outside and reopen the book,

Index finger smugly tucked inside.

The next chapter

is on

‘Natural Selection’.

Composed 7/5/15.


Image By Andreibanc (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.