Waterbug

Weeding with the Cat

Weeding with the Cat

It's supposed to be in the nineties today.
The cat knows that and doesn't want to go outside,
prefers the crook of your knees as you lie abed reading
Harry Potter (Rawlings has cast a spell on you)
but I dump her out the door, fat cat, and join her
to weed, a game that I am losing
as summer moves along.

I grab them slowly, down close to the mulch,
slowly enough that the roots slide from the soil,
(bend from the waist and pull with the left,
transfer to the right hand, after awhile
deposit a full load in the clear bag
prescribed by our trash removal company
for lawn waste). Bending down, close in to the
reeds gone wild, crab grass, morning lilies,
and some sort of thistle I avoid,
I get gnats in my eyes. (Id feel sorry for them
as they die, but they are making the view murky.)

The lawn care man appears to do
our periodic fertilizing (6 times a year, putting
esoteric beads of something on the lawn
which makes it grow nice and green
and keeps the weeds down and I hope
doesnt run off into the water table
to make mutant fish, after all this is supposed to be
a non-chemical alternative company) and says
stay cool as he leaves.

Gypsy lolls in the shade, coming out to visit
only once, lisping a tentative inquiry.
When I go in, through the garage, she escapes
the great outdoors.

Cat Hat Write-Up

Cat rhymes with fat
and pat, so of course
I must try to pat
our fat cat, but usually
she won't let me do that
(She’s a bit of a brat),
nor will she sit with me
where I'm sitting, preferring to curl up
in the warmth of where I sat --
and, returning, must be careful
not to sit again, crushing her flat
as a furry doormat.

Mostly cat rhymes with at,
which is always where she is,
being a specialist in places,
making them hers, making them places
(so many places I hadn't thought of as places
until they were where she was at).

Really she should be a Quat,
not a cat, for the soft qu leading into the sharp at
expresses her phonically, while Q (plump rear
with a tail to one side) expresses her visually,
what I see of her as she settles on my chest,
facing away, the non-word, Quat, starting
(as the cat does, usually) by going away.

When I play with the cat, tempting her
to attack a feather, she won't let me stop.
I tell her, GOOD cat! You've GOT it! You've won!
(She isn't fooled, wants more.)
Next time I'll respond with the following palindrome
(which, like the cat, comes by going):

Won at attack, cat. Ta ta now...

Dean

You know she's up to no good

You know the cat is up to no good
when she's on your bookcase and
all you can see is her hind legs and tail,
when you can't see her, but
something is moving somewhere
and it isn't a cat and you can't find your pen,
when you can't walk past the bed
because there's a tail sticking out
from under the flounce and
you haven't got any socks on.

Pam

Stuck

I used to be able to fly.
"I think I'll pick up one of those,"
I said, swooped down and grabbed one --
Oof! Heavier than it looked.
I couldn't take off with it,
could only wobble forward
a few feet at a time,
so I decided to let go...
couldn't, this damned thing
was sticky, full of complex
fluids and tissues, kind of
interesting, but it wouldn't
let go of me. My wings
were doing me no good,
stuck to this mass, so I folded them --
I think I folded them. It's been so long now,
I'm not sure where they are.
This sticky thing isn't so bad --
it carries me where I need to go
(ever so slowly). And sometimes,
when it sleeps, I dream of flight.

Dean

The stickiness of Play

So that's how it works, she said.
This morning I saw
evidences of a sticky situation.
I told him.
He got serious.
As he rushed off to handle it,
I saw the flicker of web lines
getting sticky.

Pam

"Hello", She Beamed

Our lines of communication
tend to get coated with the energy
of our efforts to reach
and to withdraw from the world.
The more serious we get
(starved for the quickness of play),
the more solid our lines, our communications
stiffened with ancient energies,
white and gray, transluscent,
barely distinquishable from the shifting shadows
on our walls.

Returned to play, I can move about
among these petrified beams,
as in a Jurrasic Park for incomplete hellos,
a jungle jim, crazy-angled prehistoric ZIPs
and ZAPs, a worldwide web in which
those who cannot see the strands
are easily entrapped. Fortunately

the beams are not, in themselves, sticky,
but are made of what combines with
our serious to produce stickiness.
Scrub off your seriousness,
and dart in and out of this fantastic web,
bounce on it, turning somersaults,
play tag, pluck it here or there to make
vast, dismal, plangent, sprung chords, or even --
waking those caught in the web, even those
who appear to be mere husks, sucked dry
of play -- even music.

Dean

The puppet master speaks

From this height, looking down
into your world, I must admit
I do see strings. Some are pulled
at the heart of things, some
are visionary and stretch out
into a putative future, some disappear into
a lamentable and malnourished past.
But there are strings, yet. Strings
between nations, friends, enemies,
Poison-dipped strings, thrumming
taut emotons, slack nearly forgotten threads.
Follow them to their source and you find
you.

Pam

No Strings Attached

Nod your head
slowly
up,
down,
up,
down...

There. Now
how the hell
did you do that?

Dean

In my head

Often my head
surprises me with what's in it.
A day at the beach, the
detritus of an old horror movie,
the smell of rubber (or ether),
a plethora of stimuli.
But where's the puppet master?

Pam

In My Head

I never look to see
what I have stored in my head.
I want it to be a surprise.
Someday, I'll lift off the lid
(OOOF! OK, lets set it
over here, gently now!)
and it will all come tumbling out,
for it must be stored
under great compression,

far more than you'd think
would fit, for my head is like
a magician's cloak, from which
can be extracted endless chains
of red, blue and yellow silken handkerchiefs,
flocks of doves, three squirming white bunnies,
dozens of bouquets, a violin,
a trumpet, a stool, a whip, several large
balloons and a pretty girl in tights
who emerges juggling
three oranges.

(Some would say it's Pandora's box
in reverse -- after all the pretty things emerge,
clawed monsters leap out, followed by
lumbering, crushing beasts, accompanied
by staggering effluvia, followed by
shadowy figures, radiating terror...
but that's ridiculous. With all the fine women,
fresh mornings and inklings of poems
I've stowed there, all the homes,
friends and lovers, mountains, butterflies
and arching elm trees, how could there be room
for monsters in my head -- I mean
it's just a head! Look at it!

You wouldn't think,
to look at my head, that it could contain
whole worlds. It's a serious solid head,
thick-skulled, bearded, sharply nosed,
receding hairline, spacious brow, intent eyes --
well, the lips are too big for seriousness,
and the eyes might contain, as far in
as you can see, a lithe assistant in spangles
juggling things that catch the light in passing.

Dean