Poem for Monday

The Pet
By Cate Marvin

I rode him through the village, smiling.
He tossed his tasseled mane in distress.
The villagers took his gesture as vanity,
and made no attempt to rein him back.
Camped at night by stream and fire,

he seemed to think stories were in order.
The ghoulish tales that twisted out his mouth
no longer frightened me. On leaving,
I'd taken on a certain complacency. Later,
he'd characterize my silence as merely

mean. But what is mean about a mouth
that, having no stories, claims it can provide
no flower for the ear, no wine for the wind?
I tried: I told the tale of him, which he
(the version being mine) was not much

interested in. But all of us; the fattening
moon, the yewey trees, the sharp-toothed
stars who combed their glowing backs against
the sky like cats; we laughed. And now
that I had left, where would I take him?

He was vehicle and, as such, responsibility.
He was deadening, tiresome, and necessary.
I made ourselves a home and kept him gently
as a pet. Visitors often wonder aloud,
How do you manage to keep such a creature

inside? The floors are stained with his keep.
I tell them my heart is huge and its doors
are small. Once I took him in he grew. Now
I cannot remove him without killing him,
which, frankly, I have never wanted to do.

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I woke up with an even worse sore throat than on Yom Kippur, not helped by having been used as the mountain for a mountain-climbing kitten at insane hours of the night, so didn't get out of bed till after 9 and was slow to get anything done in the morning. When Adam got home from Hebrew school, we decided to go pick raspberries and the first of the season's apples, though there's no Red Delicious yet. It was over 80 degrees despite being the equinox and a beautiful day to be outdoors, but there are pumpkins coming ripe and the Butler's Orchard store is all decorated and stocked for Halloween, so it was a lovely afternoon.















Came home, had dinner and busted a gut laughing at The Family Guy Star Wars episode, which delightfully had several references to Airplane ("I just want to tell you both good luck, we're all counting on you." "And Leia's getting laaarger!")and several other pop culture icons of the era in which the first movie came out as well as more modern stuff (Dirty Dancing! WTF!) I am hoping the strap-on joke went over my kids' heads but they got Obi-Wan's lightsaber perking up when Luke showed up! Then we watched the season premiere of Shark, which was well-done but I don't know if it's going to be enough to make me put off watching Brotherhood until its Wednesday airing once that comes back next week. Wrote up an interview with Jeri Ryan in which she said she didn't think Jessica and Sebastian would date, which is a relief because when I heard she was pregnant, I worried that they were going to get together in a rush so they didn't have to hide her behind a desk.

We have been keeping Daisy in our bedroom when we go out but letting her have the run of the house when we are home. Somehow she managed to trap herself in the basement bathroom where the litter boxes reside and we didn't hear her whining pathetically for half an hour! She survived this trauma and is now sprawled on the couch mewling to get her chin and belly stroked. Or maybe she is mewling about the Redskins' collapse against the Giants...