Colorado Low
Dec 25 2016


Like a summer squall, on cat’s paws
flitting over the lake 
the winter storm begins.
With a light touch,
scattered snow, swirling
a few desultory gusts.
The tense calm
before the blizzard breaks; 
as a tiger
crouching for hours
stalks her prey.

They’re calling for freezing rain, high winds, a big dump.
And we will be snow-stayed, curled-up inside
fat, and contented;
Siamese, Tonkinese, purring Sphynx,
Burmese, Balinese, Bengal,
Russian Blue, Cornish Rex
Ragdoll.

In another season
it would be thunder, lightning, flash flood.
Coddled felines, who detest water
stranded here, at the bottom
of the atmospheric ocean,
rudely awakened
to the conceit of safety 
the illusion of control.
While the tiger, in all her lithe concentrated power
would be appalled;
our forbear
who swam expertly
shook-off the cold. 

Snow, whiting-out the world
and barring the door
as it piles up-and-up
above the window sills. 
Just so long as the roof holds, the hearth glows
on soft pampered fur. 



This is my first “cat” poem. Lots and lots of dogs; but no cats. 

Although it started out as another of my dreaded “weather poems”. Which I desperately did not want to write, but which nevertheless had me doodling around with the first couple of lines -- just to see where it went. And so it was “cat’s paws” that set me off, inviting the cat metaphors (in this poem, we are the soft pampered tabbies, the tiger our rugged ancestors), the delectable sound of the various breeds. Lists like that, with their detail and specificity,  should be the death of poetry. But I’m a sucker for them:  the juxtaposition of sound and the mouth-feel of the words; the novel and evocative language; the shameless piling on. 

This also  puts me in mind of a favourite Margaret Atwood poem. Of course, she does it so much better. Here it is, by way of comparison:


February 

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and the pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.