Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Ellen’s Cat

The cat was last seen in the lot behind the duplex.
The cat was missing, could be dead.
Probably dead.
The lot behind the duplex: summer hot,
grass, sourweed, dandelions, broken bottles.

Somewhere else a moon ripples in the bay,
but the cat is not there, not even remembered there,
some time else..

No one ever found the cat.

Thirty years ago. Long decomposed now, the cat.
Long debriefed until the subject changed, the
moon covered with clouds and days. Ellen

who loved the cat as much because no one else did,
only remembers sometimes.

I only remember Ellen sometimes.

This is how memories decompose:

Worms and fleas and bugs wiggle through them,
for the nourish-me-now, and the bits wiggle inside
them, and the nourish-me-now creates gas

outside the worms,
inside the memory.
The memory swells

as if ready to float over the grass and sourweed.
Float now, not stalk, not slink.

Not hunting. Not hunted.

Float.

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