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Black triangle in light
While the others sleep, the black cat
Sits on the sill in a rectangle of light,
The only one in the dark kitchen, still
As an unwatched sculpture. This morning,
A quiet waiting wedge, the cat eyes
Some gulls ferrying between sky, sand.
Perhaps knowing how near the sand
Dunes are, across the highway only, the cat
Presses the glass, paws her reflection, eyes
Never leaving the gulls just beyond the light
Warming her screened perch. Slowly, it’s morning
In that window. She sits, watching, still.
And she might stay all day, watching still.
The smell of the sea, the ping of blown sand
Tease her to the glass, testing her each morning.
Ancient patience meets disregard in the cat
Who measures the gulls’ flight in the cold light,
Noting the ravens’ clatter too, with great green eyes.
So much unsaid by those wide eyes.
Yet something about her suggests, “Be still,
Or, come closer, I will jump into the light
You play in. You’re playing, I know. The sand
Smells like a beach a grain at a time.” The cat
Stretches gently, jumps, finished for this morning.
I’d thought to paint her, there, some morning.
How to give the motion of her stillness to other eyes?
Or, show color condensing around this small monochrome cat?
An early sketch shows promise but still
It’s only promise, not salt, flight or sand.
Here: A small black triangle on a pale plane of light.
She draws us there, summoning beach light
Slowly into the room. Brightest at mid morning,
But not bright now. The bunch grasses wave, trapping sand
Blown across the highway, and the surfers’ eyes
Narrow against the wind, the ones still
Too young for shades, as they pass by window and cat.
As if you could outwalk the light world of her eyes,
Or the day’s flight from morning, sweeping over the sand.
Or, forgive the still capture of this small black cat.
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