A Sweeping View

Although this poem describes my grandparent's cat, it's really about a woman I've known virtually all my life.

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 Whitey  (for WS) 

She’d be asleep at Granddad’s feet

With paws tucked in beneath her chest.  

Pretty she was, serenely sweet

Content within her feline rest.

  

A sound of shoes treading the stairs  

Made her bright eyes pop open wide.  

She would ne’er be caught unawares  

But e’er ready to run and hide.

  

Despite my visits ev’ry day  

To me she acted quite flighty.  

A blur of fur running away  

Was most I saw of old Whitey.

  

Not once in all her twenty years  

I heard her soft purring within.  

My hands neither caressed her ears

Nor stroked along her whiskered chin.  

 

A time or two she showed her face  

Peeking out but only to just  

Remain in her secluded place  

‘Cause terror reigned instead of trust.  

 

If she for more affection yearned  

Perhaps as inner turmoil churned  

Was not anything I discerned  

So waiting free my lap she spurned  

For from her fears she never turned  

Or in tenderness ever learned  

That in giving, love is returned.  
24-28 September 1999

 

 

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