Osmosis

The way our cat

sleeps on our books

has made us appraise

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 in

the dark,

are conductors that channel

info 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,

buttress Hawking’s

Grand Design

beneath her chin,

await the meows

that would 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

Andreas Gripp