I wasn’t going to share anything beyond an American Sentence for 9/11, for elegies. But there was a synergistic moment. A very good friend’s mother died earlier this summer. Her memorial was the first week of September. That same friend’s cat, a companion of nearly 18-years, died the week before her mother’s memorial. I wrote a little prose poem to tuck inside a card, a separate from the mother’s card, for her cat. I could write to the the personality of the cat as I could not her mother. I knew the cat best. My friend said it touched her, that it meant a great deal. That I captured the essence of her cat. It was a comfort.

Poetry-friends: That is the most I could ever hope for from my writing. To make someone I love feel better. Perhaps, you might say, writing poetry to a cat is not enough in this world. I think it might just be.

* * *
For Proust, For Donna

A little cat. A little black cat with small ears and green eyes. A little cat that has as much soul as any two-legged creature. A little black cat that gathers the room, a house. His personality radiates from a handled basket in the bar, from a perch in the touring car’s back seat.

A dapper little man in a fur coat. Tidy. Commanding but never shrill. A quizzical Jack Benny look that brings a smile. You laugh out loud.

A lilting gait, a bit of a wobble. You wear your purr like another would a cane with a jeweled top.

Pick me up and rest me on your shoulder – I see the world in you and through you. I shall always be your little cat. Love ~ Proust.

* * *
Is it perfect poetry? No. But it meant something to someone. And that is enough. A remembrance.

Related posts:

1. Mother’s Prose Poem (deb)
2. Mother’s Prose Poem (deb)
3. Lazy Summer Days