In Praise of Bucky

Bucky, our black and white tuxedo cat, sits in a patch of winter sunshine.  I altered the photo with Photoshop Elements (love that program).  She's a fine creature, affectionate, playful, and just nervous enough about visitors to quietly excuse herself from the room when they arrive. Nobody complains about Bucky cat.  On these cold winter days and nights she is as warm on my lap as an electric blanket, and in the morning she is a fine alarm clock, wakening me with a slow dance along my hips, and a rumbling hum.

The cat's song

by Marge Piercy

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness,

My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy says

the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing

milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.

I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,

to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.

Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,

says the cat, although I am more equal than you.

Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?

Can you run up and down trees?  Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.

My emotions are as pure as salt crystals and as hard.

My lusts glow like my eyes.  I sing to you in the mornings

walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally

as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.

I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.

Envy lashes my tail.  Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur.  I will teach you to be still as an egg

and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.