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Ginger
by David Asia
She’s an old farm cat,
Born in a soup of littermates
On my daughter’s bed,
A calico with big clown feet,
Six toes on one paw.
For eight years she lived in the barn,
All the noisy comings and goings,
The living and dying,
Like when the bobcat
Ravaged the poultry house
Leaving such an extravagant carnage.
Then we put her in a cage
And let her loose, with us,
Expatriates on the I-5 Corridor.
To this day she screams at me,
Why me? Why here?
But there are those rare moments
On the back deck
When the lawns are mowed,
The machines quiet,
And the sun drags her cloak
Over the mountains to the west.
She settles on my lap
And we drift back to the alfalfa dust
Hanging heavy in the heat
And her,
Motionless in the barn’s dark loft,
Seeing nothing but the movements of the mouse,
Gathering hair and feathers
To spin her perfect bowl.
For all her ears and eyes,
The mouse is blind and deaf
To the calculations computed silently
To the thirty second of an inch,
Close enough to grab the tiny creature
Until her small heart explodes.
The terror gone,
The nest unfinished.
6/19/2012
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