Spuddy Retreat Day One: Take Two

Spuddy Retreat: Spuddy Poem One
This week, I am cat-sitting for Sharon and Frank’s cat Spuddy. I brought my laptop over and after loving him, feeding him and giving him attention, I sat at the kitchen table and wrote. I wanted Spuddy to have some company for a while. This poem is the result of my first Spuddy Retreat:

Take Two

You sip blue shadows from the gathering dusk. Bite
moon cookies, the cracked light shining sweet
on your tongue. We play in the heaving, honeyed void.
What passes for earth, falling water, thistles, ordinary
grass and wet leaves slips over us, chiffon and silk. I watch

my foot dip into undulating transparent layers, the solid gone
liquid, gone empty, everything shining, flowing. You slide
in and out between layers, luminous and translucent. I think we
are twins. I think we will marry. Perhaps I am the riverbed and you
the river. Together, the vast and crashing fall.
But if you leave, we cannot be twins,

can never marry. I shout and run
after you. I want to hold
this overflowing cup to your fingertips and lips,
touch your tongue to this ambrosia. I call and call
until you turn back
to me. A sip of nectar: your fingers twine into mine.

The earth settles into solid silence, shivers. Hunkers down
a moment before the shimmer song

begins
again.



Mary Stebbins
for KeithFriday, April 22, 2005 Earth Day.

This poem is one of a series of poems re-envisioning my miraculous first meeting with Keith.