Cat Walk

I am the cat who walks by herself,
still proudly practising
social distancing,
a shadow on a garden fence.

I purr as the spring sun strokes my fur,
luxuriate in long grass,
sniff flowers as I pass,
camouflaged in bush and tree.

My human wrangles with words,
so I curl up on her lap,
listening to each tap –
until I fall asleep, twitching,

and go hunting for rhymes
in the poetry of my dreams.

Kim M. Russell, 4th April 2023

Luna in the willow tree

It’s the first Tuesday in April and Lisa is hosting the dVerse Poets Pub’s Poetics with a menagerie!

Lisa says that the weather is warming up a bit in Michigan and the critters are getting more active, which was the impetus for today’s prompt. She explains that she searched for poems about animals and was surprised at how many there were. She was more surprised that, as much as they were describing the attributes of the animals, they were also paralleling attributes that humans might have. She has given us wonderful examples in poems by Matthew Francis, Ronald Wallace, Claudia Emerson, William Logan and, my favourite, ‘Snake’ by D.H. Lawrence.

The challenge is to work with one (or more) of the following options:

  1. Choose any animal, consider its nature, and write a poem about the animal;
  2. Choose a particular attribute of an animal and write a poem that is about the animal but also an attribute that humans exhibit;
  3. Create your own myth or fable involving animals.

There are no form, rhyme, or subject constraints.

I thought I’d rework an old poem from 6th April 2020, originally entitled ‘Lockdown with Cat’.

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41 thoughts on “Cat Walk”

  6. This is incredibly gorgeous, Kim! 😍 I can picture the cat so clearly in your words and especially admire this part; “I purr as the spring sun strokes my fur, luxuriate in long grass, sniff flowers as I pass, camouflaged in bush and tree.” 💖💖

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  15. Wonderful piece Kim! Always find cats csptivating to watch. Ee lost ouf Taja 8 years ago. 😕 …she was totally jet black with a little white diamond on her chest.

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  16. Love it that “I am the cat” – as in the reader is the cat with that first line. And then “my human” as if the cat owns the human….and sometimes it seems like they do! 🙂

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  18. Cats dream. Cats use some audible “words” to communicate. Do cats hear rhymes in their words? Who knows? I often point out that it’s as naive and silly to assume that what we can’t verify never happens as to believe that it does.

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  20. Pingback: Cat Walk – AxZilla.com

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