Cat Album - 2 Poem by Lonnie Hicks

I have an album collection
of moments
stray and deliberate;

each dependent
upon time and circumstance;
friends, years attached and bright shiny faces.

There too
are written
words,
paper clipped
in decade stacks,
categorized
and organized,

they lie
on my mind's desk-
like cats
lounging
languidly.

I stroke them-
old friends familiar;
lapping them up like kitten's milk-

others move arthritically
yet close
preening softly.

My album cat ecology
is witness

all together
and separately;
some mute-
some paper purring memories.

My hands stroke all of them
in these photos
fresh and graying
eliciting from me
sighs
coming to me from down the years.
I think of them all
as cats purring.