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Jerry H. Jenkins
reads
Mirage
in Real Audio format.
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My father kept a hundred cats, a horde
of sinuous mongrel motion, tails and fur.
They sat in tribal clusters, sat and glowered,
or scratched, and stared. I never heard one purr.
I was a stranger they would tolerate
for just a while. They sprawled upon the eaves
with half-closed eyes. A few of them would wait
outside the door to be sure that I’d leave.
From his chair, he'd stir them with his cane.
In tawny swirls of caramel, they would move
languidly around him. Some would deign
to make a place for me, but all would shove
me in their passage, buffeting my calves,
and smirk, secure in their nine-hundred lives.
I called on him, but we could not connect.
He sat in his big chair, lion on a throne,
silent or laconic. Sunlight flecked
the amber air that winter afternoon.
Dust was floating through the lazy light,
Brownian motes in a thin, still medium.
Off in the corners, cats yawned, smug and quiet,
baring their teeth, their tongues, their tedium.
Something in the focus of his stare
was like a cat's absorbed intensity
discovering in a shaft of sunlit air
a glittering world that only it can see.
He sipped his milk and stared. I’d trace his gaze
through dust mirages in those silent days.
Maybe it was the plenitude of life,
its warmth in fecund cats, that made him keep
them close. At dusk, he heaved himself on stiff
and crippled knees, his lap robe in a heap,
and left his chair. The cats all sprang awake
to trail him to the barn at feeding time.
He was an old, slow ship, and in his wake
the cats crisscrossed like gulls in a foraging line.
Down by the lake, the evening wind arose
to cross the brittle lawn and pass through trees
devoid of birdsong, as an old dog's nose
navigates a trail from memories.
The breeze that brushed the barn took on the scent
of small bones, feathers, feline excrement.
Late winter. The glassy sky was thin and cold,
my father buried that day on a windswept hill.
In his room, a strange cat, honey-gold,
occupied his chair. I loathed it, filled
with grief and rage that it could be so bold
as to assume his place. I thought to kill
the arrogant cat, but something made me hold.
We stared each other down in an act of will.
Sunlight slanted into the quiet room
and stirred the amber ocean of its eyes.
A hundred others watched. A clock's deep boom
troubled the silence. The sun crawled down the sky.
At last, he blinked and rose. Then he was gone.
Outside, cats were dispersing, one by one.
I traveled home. Spring came, then summer's heat,
a time of grief and grayness and despair.
I moped around the front steps. Hot concrete
stung me when I sat. I didn't care.
A stray cat wandered in, claimed squatters' rights
and lolled beneath my car in its midday shade
He roused and stretched, unwinding at twilight
to roam the neighborhood in smug parade.
Although we’d never met before, he seemed
to favor me. He sauntered to where I sat
and rubbed against my leg. I knew he schemed
for food with false affection, brazen cat,
full of guile, innocent of shame.
But I would wait each evening till he came.
He looked well-kept, no ordinary stray,
and seemed familiar with the evening bowl
of milk I poured for him. He'd drink, then stay
awhile with me before his dusk patrol.
So every twilight, he and I would meet
upon the concrete steps, and sit and stare
at different worlds in fading evening heat
until he'd wander off to who-knows-where.
One tranquil evening as I contemplated
father and his cats, I reached out and
caressed the cat. It whirled with sudden hatred,
and sank its teeth bone-deep into my hand.
Our eyes met one last time, that little while,
across a gulf we couldn't reconcile.
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