I Eat Poetry

Goodbye

Mole or mouse
whatever you are skittering
under the leaf mold through tunnels and runways to the mouth

of the burrow
our cat waits hair-triggered
she’ll bring you to me a flensed grey rag velvety as a glove

finger turned
inside out but not before she lifts
her paw and lets you make a zig-zag panicky dash I cannot tell

if you suffer
freed then caught your fast
dance without music the bloody flicking and fidgeting caught

like the tongue
stammering on a word
then making its scrambly plunge through the underbrush until

the cat’s paw
pins you down it is hard to say
goodbye to the sensitive snout to the poor but adequate eyes

goodbye fur
goodbye father it is time to go
back to your atoms now time to go forth in your nakedness.


John Witte
The Hurtling
Orchises Press