Caveat: Poem #1791 “Six cats in Trieste”

Six cats in Trieste

in the blue wind off the cold Adriatic,
off the snow-covered Alps
weirdly visible on the northern horizon,
I climbed the Scala dei Giganti,
up the hill to the castle,
around the back of the cathedral San Giusto,
past the monument to the dead of world war two,
down the stairs behind the ruins
of the foundations of the roman theater;
I saw six cats:

one in the sun in a window;

one on some grass,
looking up at the first one;

one on an abandoned,
ratty-looking suitcase in a vacant lot, behind the stairs;

one colored brown,
hunting the blades of grass,
staring at ghosts;

one mewing in the dark shadow of a crumbling stone step;

one sitting high up on the top of a wall
that was covered with spikes to keep the pigeons away,
but the spikes where broken off
and the cat was comfortable.

– a free-form poem originally written in March, 2005, when I was visiting Trieste, Italy. I wrote it on paper at that time, then transcribed it into the blog a bit later, but I only gave it it’s own separate blog-entry in 2011, but I put it under the appropriate date. Anyway, I’m “republishing” it now, as one of my daily poems. Mostly, I republish these older poems in the series of daily poems out of some notion of completeness – at some point I decided that the daily poems would eventually encompass ALL my poems. Anyway, by dredging these poems out of my past, I can find an occasional respite from the need to come up with a new poem each and every day.
picture

Back to Top