HYAKUATKE AND THE COMET CATS

Tonight was twenty thousand years ago,

Walking nightward looking north.

Something old was coming back to me,

Older, stranger even than mammoth mummies,

Eyes frozen in disbelief, mouths full of lilies.

It was the night of the comet, a memory of stars and twilight,

a call to sad, stray men, and stray cats.

They were there with me, suddenly, melting out of the tall grass,

fur shining with starlight, streaming from the shadows,

Filling the river bank and the field,

staring upward - waiting and watching.

They did not move when I stepped toward them nor flinch under my touch,

only, we stared, frozen, dying mammals, watching the sky.

In the grass, under a low, late winter moon,

an aged toothless calico pressed against me for warmth, and we watched the sky.

Then, something older than the comet passed between us and shot upward to join Hyakuatake.

And the comet cats, when I looked down, all had fled.

So the night washed over me, and the slivered moon sank behind dark hills.

It would be long, long ago, and I, very old,

before I would again recall the taste of death

and recognize it’s return under a candle wax sky.