Look, I’ve found an Elephant’s Leg?
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not
Cat’s don’t find daisies and sit stripping petals,
asking silly questions about love for instance.
My cat is in no doubt – she’d eat an elephant for me;
that is, if she really had to. And even if it took her
the rest of her life she’d do it. And she’d get up before me
in the morning; lasso the sun and get him started from
west to east. Something she’s been wanting to do for years
to surprise me with a poetry of her own.
But we’ve no elephants in our garden, only this;
one cat and I suppose, a couple of strays,
who steer clear of me. They, poor creatures, know nothing
of a love that is never in doubt – in which a cat eating an elephant
could possibly figure, and it does. Don’t ask me why it just does.
…………………….. And I’m just
thankful they (meaning the strays)
keep the yard free of rodents.
Well, I believed it was them – but this morning, here
on the bottom step was a tiny mouse, lying on its side,
eyes closed, looking soft and sleepy. And it could
be no other than my cat who presented me with
the next best thing to an elephant; this mouse:
which puny gift I gathered into a wrapping of newspaper
and binned. It was stiff and very dead. Imagine
if that had been an elephant. By the time the cat had noshed
her way through at least one stumpy leg, (not two, or four even)
the house would most surely have been overrun with several
families of mice. And the sun might have got back to his old
ways of arriving from the east.
Best not put ideas in her head. But by noon today, I had a feeling
I was going to write a poem about the gift of a mouse because
I’d found this one on my doorstep. I just never knew my poem
would include an elephant, plus a sun un-direct –
ional. The person responsible for the inclusion of an elephant,
a strangeness in the skies as well, is someone called Maurine.
She must know how huge my pussycats’ love is for me.
Yes, Slippers Cat would do anything for me. At the moment she is
twitching in her dreams. I think, dreaming of chasing
the flying pigs who arrived when the elephant didn’t
quite make it. Such is her guilt at poetry.
Benita Kape © 22.4.2018
And now for our daily prompt (optional as always). I’ve found this one rather useful in trying to ‘surprise’ myself into writing something I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:
The sun can’t rise in the west.
A circle can’t have corners.
Pigs can’t fly.
The clock can’t strike thirteen.
The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky.
A mouse can’t eat an elephant.
benitakape 