And So Say I Says BigAssCat!

The Cat's Song

by Marge Piercy

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. 

My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says 

the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing 

milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts. 

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. 

I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, 

to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. 

Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. 

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, 

says the cat, although I am more equal than you. 

Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? 

Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs? 

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. 

My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. 

My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings 

walking round and round your bed and into your face. 

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally 

as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long. 

I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers. 

Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word 

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg 

and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.