White Egrets: Poems by Derek Walcott [811.54 WAL], is a slim volume with many numbered, but otherwise untitled, poems. Being a cat person, I was particularly attracted to poem #2.
Your two cats, squat, heraldic sphinxes, with suchI like the way the poem seamlessly slides from cats to the Caribbean to the heart.
desert indifference, such "who-the-hell-are-you?" calm,
they rise and stride away leisurely from your touch,
waiting for you only. To be cradled in one arm,
belly turned upward to be stroked by a brush
tugging burrs from their fur, eyes slitted
in ecstasy. The January sun spreads its balm
on earth's upturned belly, shadows that have always fitted
their shapes, re-fit them. Breakers spread welcome.
Accept it. Watch how spray will burst
like a cat scrambling up the side of a wall,
gripping, sliding, surrendering; how, at first,
its claws hook then slip with a quickening fall
to the lace-rocked foam. That is the heart, coming home,
trying to fasten on everything it moved from,
how salted things only increase its thirst.
Visit Book Aunt for this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up.
Photo by Geoffrey Philp.
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