Reprise

Forgive the abstractedness, and the terrible verse. I don't feel up to much else today.

A shadow on the lung, they call it.
As if a black cat slunk in, settled purring on his chest.
Cancer - the big C
alliteration.
Literary terms for death
keep the creature placated,
preoccupied,
at arm’s length.

I recall the cat.
Sadistic, stalking.
It seized my grandfather.
My mother’s brother, fourteen.
My father’s brother, eighteen.
All eaten alive before I was four years old.

The cat fed fully before
curling up in a corner, claws sheathed,
sleeping with one eye open.
Lulled, deluded, we.
Hoping it had eaten its fill, left us alone.
An adopted family, after all –
flawed genes flowing elsewhere, in other’s blood,
no clarion call to beckon the claws.

Then the creature woke.
Sluggish, languishing.
Nibbling at the corners.
A bit of breakfast,
a little piece of lung from our father.
The sacrifice:
take the lung to leave the life.
Placate, lull, respite.

Then jungle cat springs from behind.
Stealth, surprise.
Jaws snap, slow bleeding into the brain.
Mother, mommy, pedestal, rock.
The earth collapses,
crashing,
clawing empty air,
nothing matters but regaining your foothold,
your strength gone forever.
We caught it too late, they say,
as if catching, caging, were options open.

Now the cat’s come again.
Scratching, stretching, it sniffs
the scent of blood in a shadow on the lung.