Black Cat And The Ruby Birthstone Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Put away that sun:
What is she doing now,
Crawling through the cupboards?
Painting her lips after some midnight hour,
Erasing the sums of the daylight:
Does she think that I still love her
When she knows that without a doubt I still do?
What could she be doing now that she’s graduated?
Is she trying on his tweed eyes,
Bighting his pipe in her intelligent teeth?
Filling the bath with bubbles and joining her dogs?
What could she be doing now
Since she’s worried back home after midnight,
And stubbed her toe on some stoned toad?
Should she be caring that I’m curious,
Curious, curious like a cat on her fence
Scenting her tasseled bicycle in the little hours that I live?
Knowing that I’m just a boy stashed away in some
High mountain, but when I come down I’ll be a man
With his pockets full of cash, running around
With his dogs- with sophisticated streaks of gray
And his hands full of firecrackers?
Could she even remember what direction I’ll be
Coming around whistling away the clouds, tapping
My feet like a dancer feeding the hungering reindeer:
I should call her, but she’ll be busy eating and
Playing with her Atari. Maybe she’ll be a cockroach
Now that she’s graduated, completely unexpected
Except by flaunting Russian authors:
What is she doing now? I don’t have an answer,
But certainly she is at the open graves dancing,
And laying out the flowers, preparing for the early unions,
Forecasting: Either there will be sun or foul weather,
But I don’t know- She is a roller coaster,
A fortune-teller of relaxing aqueducts and the lilies
Which grow there, like murals of the minds of young
Women floating patiently for their princes,
And I am just a cat pacing the stone shoreline,
Curious but too timid to swim out and taste her....