monday poem(s)#70, revisited: Naomi Shihab Nye, "The Flying Cat" and "Looking for the Cat Grave"
I posted these poems years ago. I've been thinking about them again today.
The Flying Cat
Never, in all your career of worrying, did you imagine
what worries could occur concerning the flying cat.
You are traveling to a distant city.
The cat must travel in a small box with holes.Will the baggage compartment be pressurized?
Will a soldier's footlocker fall on the cat during take-off?
Will the cat freeze?
You ask these questions one by one, in different voices
over the phone. Sometimes you get an answer,
sometimes a click.
Now it's affecting everything you do.
At dinner you feel nauseous, like you're swallowing
at twenty thousand feet.
In dreams you wave fish-heads, but the cat has grown propellors,
the cat is spinning out of sight!Will he faint when the plane lands?
Is the baggage compartment soundproofed?
Will the cat go deaf?
"Ma'am, if the cabin weren't pressurized, your cat would explode."
And spoken in a droll impersonal tone, as if
the explosion of cats were another statistic!
Hugging the cat before departure, you realize again
the private language of pain. He purrs. He trusts you.
He knows little of planets or satellites,
black holes in space or the weightless rise of fear.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
from Hugging the Jukebox
reprinted in Words Under the Words
Looking for the Cat Grave
1.
Sunlight stripes a wall.
Silent pumpkin sleeps in a river of sun.
Some moments we have spent
our whole lives walking towards.
2.
Dry grass, earth whiskers,
red sweater snagged on a tree.
Being alive is a common road,
it's what we notice makes us different.
A birdhouse becomes a floodlight.
Girls sit in a circle, learning each other
like words to be spoken in lonely places.
3.
I wish this could last. I wish we could stay outside,
sun on our cheeks, a distant engine's roar, forever.
I wish I could remember people's faces
as well as I remember my dead cat's eyes.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
from Yellow Glove
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth
The Flying Cat
Never, in all your career of worrying, did you imagine
what worries could occur concerning the flying cat.
You are traveling to a distant city.
The cat must travel in a small box with holes.Will the baggage compartment be pressurized?
Will a soldier's footlocker fall on the cat during take-off?
Will the cat freeze?
You ask these questions one by one, in different voices
over the phone. Sometimes you get an answer,
sometimes a click.
Now it's affecting everything you do.
At dinner you feel nauseous, like you're swallowing
at twenty thousand feet.
In dreams you wave fish-heads, but the cat has grown propellors,
the cat is spinning out of sight!Will he faint when the plane lands?
Is the baggage compartment soundproofed?
Will the cat go deaf?
"Ma'am, if the cabin weren't pressurized, your cat would explode."
And spoken in a droll impersonal tone, as if
the explosion of cats were another statistic!
Hugging the cat before departure, you realize again
the private language of pain. He purrs. He trusts you.
He knows little of planets or satellites,
black holes in space or the weightless rise of fear.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
from Hugging the Jukebox
reprinted in Words Under the Words
Looking for the Cat Grave
1.
Sunlight stripes a wall.
Silent pumpkin sleeps in a river of sun.
Some moments we have spent
our whole lives walking towards.
2.
Dry grass, earth whiskers,
red sweater snagged on a tree.
Being alive is a common road,
it's what we notice makes us different.
A birdhouse becomes a floodlight.
Girls sit in a circle, learning each other
like words to be spoken in lonely places.
3.
I wish this could last. I wish we could stay outside,
sun on our cheeks, a distant engine's roar, forever.
I wish I could remember people's faces
as well as I remember my dead cat's eyes.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
from Yellow Glove
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth