Middling

In middle America — a small earth tremor, not enough to scare the cat, the cat felt it, and it told the mice who lived in the walls. "It wasn’t us", they said. A mess on my desk; the glass inkpot has toppled, has spilled deep blue ink on a sheet of white paper printing upon it a smudging form, — moth shaped, and in the middle a human figure– a man-moth. I thought of ripple effects, how all things run to the middle when danger threatens. I thought of Rorschach cards and the anatomy of meaning. Across the mid-point of the rug the cat has fallen asleep. The ink-image tries to weakly crawls away, its wet wings drooping. I gently nudge it back to the middle, eventually the ink dries and stiffens.