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’.
