Paper Kittens

Small patches of bright serene blue
Peek down through violet blankets of velvet
While nearer the horizon a brighter faintly golden blue
Rips its covers into tatters
Strewing cirrus cotton chunks in its last defiance
Just below, fingers of vibrant green reach like leaping
To pull away the shroud, drag the Sun back East

(And the)

Birds fly from tree to tree,
Pause to fancy themselves
Noble and somber
Dressed in their deeper, darker coats
Tailored by glancing red light
They form a procession
To mourn with sleep under the dimming colors of clouds

(Last hour)

Floodlights like Athenian pillars
And fences like Shakespearean lattices
Stand ready to enclose and illuminate
Mock matches of suburban tennis
Games not for tonight
While somber puddles of water like oil slicks
And their parent clouds still spectate the court

(Of the)

Cut across at a slight angle
Over the lush narrow lawn
Upon the warm, matte embers
Of a manmade tar flow
A silver foreign sedan and a white domestic pickup
Find themselves stuck motionless
Amongst the slowly spreading dark

(Day is)

Cicadas see fit to speak over all
But the inbound flights
Of gigantic steel insects
Heading to their paved colony
To deliver passengers like nectar
And feed the urgent, hopeful hive of humanity
With evening greetings destined for morning goodbyes

(Slowly dying)

The smell of long-drunk coffee and sleep
Gives way to a renewed sentiment for skunk cabbage
Dangling in the air with dust
Its sight but not its presence
Disappears with the fading light
As poems shaped into paper kittens open their eyes
And the night of ink spreads over serene golden blue lines

 

Copyright 2010 Andrew Whiting

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OK, well this was the third sort of major revision to this poem, but I’m extremely happy with this, for the moment, so it may end up being it’s final form. Tell me what you think. I like that the parenthetical asides now read into the stanzas subtly enough to fit the tone of the poem without being overly melodramatic.

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