The way our cat
sleeps on books
makes us think of osmosis,
her head reposed
on the cover’s title,
her paw outstretched
over the author’s name
denoting some kind of kinship,
as though the writer
forged a portal
for lazy felines
to stealthily enter.
I’ve heard that whiskers
help a cat to navigate
the dark,
are conductors that channel
information to its brain
in a manner much quicker
than the antiquated roundabouts
of a podium-chained professor.
Let’s wake our dearest pet
upon sufficient assimilation,
see if she spouts some Shakespeare
as none other than Shylock could –
or replace The Merchant of Venice
with a treatise of greater use
than a reprisal’s pound of flesh,
done in a hush that doesn’t disturb,
propping A Brief History of Time
beneath her chin
and await the meows
that otherwise beckon us
to feed, to stroke,
to clean her kitty
litter,
that speak instead
of cosmological aeons,
the pull of black holes,
the deep red shift in stars
much too far for us to see.
Andreas Gripp
RF Image
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