Observe How Gentle Thoughts: poem

By: Cathy Sky

 

A sonnet for my tiger cat  Niamh (1997-2012)

 

Observe how gentle thoughts and ways are grieved

when watchers’ eyes, seduced, will turn their gaze

from subjects plain, the daily bread of days,

to pixeled screens where terror is conceived

in portraits of the angry and bereaved.

When talking heads proclaim: statistics say

our world is bifurcated, gone astray . . .

Come, reason. Let’s decide what we believe;

believe and know, are taught by creatures kind —

by cat’s soft velvet paws, by dog’s wet kiss;

few souls deny the comfort found in this

or question God when with compassion blessed,

Since loving animals assist the blind

I’ll trust their guidance and ignore the rest.