more Ellen Bass

[arielblue.livejournal.com]

3 A.M. FEEDING

Zeke whines softly and nudges
my door. In the wash of moonlight
his black face gleams level with mine,
the large jaw politely closed, the eyes wide open.
His expression never varies, but I know
what he wants. Yesterday he found a nest
of kittens on the side of the road
and though I can't hear them mewing, he can.
I'm too old for this, I think
as I throw on a robe and heat a cup of milk
in the microwave. My mother's in the hospital.
I have to fly back East. What am I doing
saving cats the world has too many of anyway?

The scraps of fur are up, trembling
on their skinny legs. It's all they can do
to hold up the balloons of their heads.
Their eyes are oozing, swollen shut.
Two take the dropper, but the smallest
doesn't want to eat at all, opens
her mouth only to cry. Her tongue
is the size of a baby's thumbnail, and almost
as thin. I pry apart the tiny splinter teeth
and squirt a little milk, most of which
leaks back out. Meanwhile

Zeke is in the zone, nabbing
each one as it wobbles, blindly
into his sphere. He's serene as a massive
star, culling stray bits of matter
as they wander into his gravitational field.
One at a time, he pins them with a tender
paw and sets about their baths
with his huge, dry tongue.

He's been at it all day, trotting
back and forth, a zealous waiter,
anxious to bring whatever's required—
another bottle of wine? more coffee? perhaps
the cheesecake or crème brûlée? Like
Nureyev, Mother Teresa, Stephen King,
he's found what he was born for.

As I top off the last kitten, Zeke
goes at the bottoms of the others, as their mother
would do, urging them to deliver,
licking up the miniature pees and poops.
And when they're all finally settled
in the great warm arc of his body, he sighs
and lets his eyelids drift down with satisfaction.

I shuffle back to bed with a prayer:
Let me be Zeke. Let me rush
to each moment with his devotion,
eager to lick even the ass of life.

--Ellen Bass

Comments

[sliverofsanity.livejournal.com]

Holy cow. I love this. I love animals. I totally was confused about if Zeke was a cat or dog at first, I missed the "he whines" in the first line. But DANG. The end is so startling, abrupt, unexpected, candid, alive. I also really like that part
He's serene as a massive
star, culling stray bits of matter
as they wander into his gravitational field.

I love that that's the only place the author used the word "stray" to describe the kittens. I bet she'll be keeping them. scraps of fur

[arielblue.livejournal.com]

Awww, I love your icon! The little orange and white guy looks a lot like a baby version of my orange and white guy (in my icon here).

Glad you liked the poem!