What Rough Beast | Poem for May 15, 2017

Mary B. Moore
Cat Nap

—For My Daughter

Like a thought cloud, gray and white
striped, near Damara’s head,
the cat sleeps, dreaming spotted
kingsnakes and red fox kits
queering the hen herding.
Don’t worry: He won’t eat hens.
He monitors, mothers, broods
them, defending from high-caliber
hawk sites by being seen to be.
His feet twitch in their stripy
fur coil: a bird, metal for bones, scopes
the yard, twin lenses flashing. Crikey,
he’d like to hide. But hen patrol
calls for wisdom, strategy and balls.
He puffs himself up, spiky
like a mine, his tail a pike.
That puts paid to raiders
in his dream of seeming
her hero and ours.
In Damara’s left ear,
his engine purrs.

Mary B. Moore is the author of Flicker (Broadkill River Press, 2016), winner of the Dogfish Head Poetry Award; the chapbook Eating the Light (Sable Books, 2016 ); and the poetry collection The Book of Snow (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1998). New  poems are forthcoming in the Georgia Review, Poem/Memoir/Story, Unsplendid, Still the Journal, and the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia (Vandalia Press, 2017). She is professor emerita of poetry and Renaissance literature at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you want to support the mission and work of Indolent Books, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.

Join our mailing list to receive news, updates, and special offers from Indolent Books.