An Interruption
       

A black cat appeared against a smooth adobe wall in a break
that let an old cottonwood grow, a space of interruption. It was a cat

with no ears or the ears were flat and close to the head. Here Kitty
but it didn't come. Late November, so far the one snow
lasting a few hours

every limb and twig in a bright, white skin, emphatic tree dark
stroking the chalky field where I sit when the sun is out,
reading. The tall grass is dry now, easy to finger into yellow dust.

I never saw the black back of the cat slip into the yellow field,
metallic in the heat, the cat's black back setting off a yellow's
tinny chiming. Not lowtoned

like the throng of weathered wooden crosses
against a graveyard fence, the pueblo's custom here
of burying coffinless, the opened ground

offering years and centuries of dust. Natural then
to pull up the cross, leave a ready space,
though one has said

the appropriate things, which have come easily and
in the large sense are true,
though eyes are trained to look past

not look into other eyes. What did he know then

or what did I know. It is never possible to say that
the years that follow are worth the pain given.

Copyright © 2009 Karen Kevorkian All rights reserved
from Lizard Dream
What Books Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission