Poetry as a Cat

For Poems in April, Day 16, at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are reminded of Ferlinghetti's 'Poetry as Insurgent Art' and asked to write on 'Poetry as ...'

Poetry as a Cat

Is inadequate.

You can't pick it up and hug it.
Unless it's in a book –
the old-fashioned, physical kind.
(I do pick up books I love
and hug them. Do you?)

Actually, some cats
are not very huggy either,
they merely submit
and wriggle away
as soon as feasible.
But if you are well-behaved
in their opinion,
they may reward you
by sitting on your lap –
or, if they are not lap-cats,
by snuggling close and purring.

Poetry doesn't purr or miaow.
Though it can make its readers
utter happy noises, or sometimes
yelps of indignation.

On the other hand,
it won't demand food.
If you like to eat, don't expect poetry
to get you fed. It won't even
drop the odd dead mouse
at your feet.

But poetry itself is sustained
by everything
and nothing –
being not merely animal ...
though sometimes it gives
a good imitation. (I have written
poems that roar.
Or squeak.
Or flash a claw.)

Poetry as a cat
though inadequate
is sometimes preferable.

It costs nothing
to euthanase a poem
when it's too sick to save.
You don't have to give
large sums of money to a vet,
and you need not concern yourself
about doing it kindly.
You simply crumple the paper,
or in my case press Delete.

And afterwards
you won't spend days and weeks
(and even months and years, on and off) 
crying
because there can never be
another quite like that one.

The new poem
is always the best one,
eclipsing all others.

Poetry won't leave you,
even if a particular poem
doesn't work out.
Or if it does leave for a while
it will find its way back –
like a cat that goes walkabout
long enough to worry you, but then
turns up at the back door at mealtime
just as if nothing had happened.

Cats and poetry –
minds of their own.
Not biddable
except when, for their own
inscrutable purposes
they choose to cooperate.

This poem
is going for a nap now.
Hopefully,
next time I want to pick it up,
it will wake.