The cat, cold and impervious, dozes through
my upsets, my restless pacing around time, my
smiles and thoughts that fill the air. She knows —
if my arrogance allows it, I know it is
untold clarity I can find in her eyes: that
mislaid messages are life’s greatest tragedy,
that honesty lies in the outermost grey-misted
periphery of consciousness, like a halo in the
spectral illumination of moonshine, that
it takes courage and savage delicateness to
travel this lonesome planetary journey,
that without tenderness we may as well die.