Poetry By Candace Black
January
I don’t know where the cat goes
in the basement, this cat we’re watching for our son
who doesn’t know what he wants to be, who only knows
he can’t learn in classrooms, the types of
classrooms his parents teach in
every day. I don’t know if the cat is tracking
noises I hear at night, the rustles
of creatures – small, I hope – in the walls, mice making
their circuit to the kitchen wherever they nest.
I don’t know what wakes me. The furnace
kicking on or off, a full bladder. I look
through rimed windows at the moonscape
of backyard, but morning shows
fresh tracks: rabbits, squirrels forced to ground
for a running traverse, deer who drift
through as silent and weightless as the snow
piling higher and higher during the winter
I don’t know when will end.
Read more of Candace Black's work.
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