Atonement

Atonement


This morning
the defenseless eye of a calf
catches my eye
through the bars of
the slaughtering pen:
Help me.  

At noon
the bruised doe floats dreamlike
across the Honda's hood        
like a constellation floats
across the sky at midnight.  Her eye
looking grievously
into mine  is the eye of
the Archer looking into the
dark heart of the galaxy, seeing
the End of Time.  Help me. 

In our bed
my old cat purrs softly
in the bend of my body,
the sound coming
from some plaintive internal tunnel.
Her eyes are cancers.
They have shaved her to the skin.
Her sad pink body gives off
a kind of light.
She shudders with the explosions
of her own sound, claws working,
heart beating.  The wave of it
climbs and then plunges her
into cat dreams.  She sleeps.

In the dark of night, we sleep
my cat and I, our heads together,
filled with winged things:

          angels and archangels,
          white cabbage moths,
          and slow, incautious sparrows.  

This is another story.

Although the moon
shows no trace of them,
they still exist somewhere in
the memory
of the universe.