Pushkin
In a cage at the uptown ASPCA
he left his musky scent on my hands,
and locked his yellow-green eyes
on those of a woman in a blue smock
who said he was strange, and when I took
him downtown on the Second Avenue bus
he forced his head through the cardboard box
and looked like a just-hatched bird
making everyone laugh, and when I first
offered him food he ate growling
under his breath, and from the beginning
he came running to me when I said
his new name Pushkin, as if he knew
he had the spirit of the dead poet within him.
And I have always loved
how dense and black his top coat is,
how white fur hikes up his front legs
like thick storm boots, how he still
has not grown into his huge paws,
how in cold weather he naps on
my flannel nightgowns, or lies across
vents of the radiator so that only he
feels the heat, and in warm weather
fills my small bathtub with his long body,
and when he doesn't like his food
he scrapes his paws across the kitchen walls,
and as he gets older his white stomach falls
like a loose purse between his legs.
When he is sleeping an old soul's smile
forms on his mouth, and each morning
at 6:45 he stands over me pushing his face
against my ear and he is always stalking
shadows at the door when I come home,
and when I write he sits in the middle
of my lined papers and rubs his black
and white face against my pen,
and on sad days when I feel stuck inside
I can not resist him,
and I let him be my poem.
Copyright ©1994 Penny Cagan
