Home Vacation ~ Poem Two

Below is the second of about a dozen poems I wrote during an at-home vacation. This one reads rather like a journal entry fashioned into a poem.

By Mo Conlan

My new cat Delilah
snaps at my hand
with sharp teeth.
She tears around the house
like a demon, half feral.

I miss my late feline friend Darwin,
the most amiable cat
ever sent to Earth
to be a human companion.

There are snapping teeth
in every corner of my life.
I need the universe to throw me a bone.
“Hey, a little help here,” I pray,
only it is more like a whine.

The first novel
is not selling,
the second is
not writing itself...

I have lunch with an old boyfriend -
a man full of projects,
prickly and bossy,
big-hearted, quirky
and as full of juice and angst as ever.
He says he’d like to go out
to the movies sometime --
like a line from some
sappy sweet 1940s musical.
(I say OK, but let’s
don’t call it going out.)
We share a bread pudding
for dessert.

I shop for a birthday present
for my sister and find
a towering yellow birdhouse,
room enough for three bird families.
My nature-loving sister will love it.
I say “Wrap it up.”
The sales woman has quite a job
swathing that Taj Mah Hall of a birdhouse
in white tissue and yellow ribbon.
We can’t stop laughing.

My daughter calls
from Michigan
to say the baby crowed for joy
when she saw the lake
for the first time.
She wishes I were with them –
and means it.

I make a new friend,
another writer,
new to the city.

I asked for a bone
And I got a meal.
(And here’s what I think.
If I keep putting
love out there –
and effort and creativity
and kindness
as much goodness
as I have…
it does come around back.)

I begin writing
the at-home vacation poems,
thinking what a gift
my writing is…
instead of that boulder.

As I write, the demon cat Delilah
has curled herself on my chest –
making it difficult to type,
but she is purring –
not biting.

Read another at-home vacation poem.