Monthly Archives: January 2019
Poem at 4.43 pm
I’m ready now to leave the house.
My dressing gown
thrown on the bed.
I knew she’d go for that
and make her own bed.
And she knew I was watching her closely.
Nearby lay my Sunday best clothes,
just as tempting to her. Her claws
go out to them. It was not
easy to do; shoo her away.
And relenting she went back
to her favourite anyway.
Here is her church of thankfulness.
I go to commune with my friends
knowing she’ll stay here the rest
of the day. And we’ll both
have made prayers of gratitude.
Her devotion is unbearable.
It is now late in the day.
How favourite can my
dressing gown be
to my little cat?
Benita H. Kape © 20.1.2019
Influence for this poem from the lines “Do cats pray when they sleep?” Mary Oliver
Poem I Happen To Be Standing
Mary is the name on all our lips today (Mary Oliver)
On the Loss of a Poet who said:
“the tree is my sister”
Mary Oliver
Mary is the name on all our lips today;
those who love nature,
those who love poetry,
geese and ponds, snow –
things that are gentle
like all things in nature.
She gave us a thousand mornings
in but one poem
in many; spring mornings
or snow. She knows the sea
will go on doing its work.
And she is with Molly now.
Benita H. Kape © 19.1.2019
Green Springs the New Year
Green Springs the New Year
(First poem for the New Year 2019)
It grows, it grows I want to sing;
this Hoya cutting at my door;
well, all three cuttings; one struggling
more so than the other two, which have
sprung so gorgeously, greenly into life
as we slip into the New Year.
It seemed right there should be one
loitering, one which held onto the force
of the year just gone with its unique
ups and downs.
Hoya are long-lived plant life. These
Hoya have the company of a kitsch cat;
the bewildered look on her metal face
was not to be resisted and in the presence
of my sister, who loathes cats, I purchased her.
She is the first thing that greets me at my
back door this, and every morning. The Hoyas
will be moved on to more suitable Hoya
growing cavities within the house. They
could take over the house because who
in their right mind would want to cut
them back. And so the cat goes on
looking bewildered at the strange things
I do year in, year out. Her head on a spring,
I make sure she nods her approval. At a push
she could maybe wave her head in disapproval,
a much harder thing for this cat to do.
And walking into my New Year,
greeting cat, who gives me such hope.
(This cat does have a name. It is Noeline;
and yes you’ve guessed it, for my sister).
By the time next Christmas and New Year
arrive, how much will have changed,
or should that be – how much the world
will have again changed? Much more so
than three struggling Hoya cuttings springing
greenly and gorgeously into life. And life
will have ways other in which we will remember
both the sad and the beautiful.
Benita H. Kape © 2.1.2019
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