Cat three-tooth, cat stone-deaf, cat sidewinder walk,
Old Bealman stalked the croaking, the croaking,
with forepaws meek stroking
airs of a summer cool night.
Bealman, Bealman, Meow & Sealman,
Pacing, still racing, one two three man.
Bealman—frog fisher & free.
Delphinium, the roses, lupine interposes
a shadow of fortressed green leaf
disguises the notion my Bealman supposes—
to seize, dismember it through,
make self-concocted, dishering frog stew.
Bealman, Bealman, Meow & Sealman,
Pacing, still racing, one two three man.
Bealman—frog fisher & free.
Night hours accounting, morning’s surmounting,
a bird warning Bealman, his patience to thin.
Croaking still blending, a flower stalk was bending,
two legs, peaking out, sent Bealman straight in.
Bealman, Oh my Bealman, Meow & Sealman,
Pacing, still racing, one two three man.
Frog fisher & free.
I saw Bealman beaming; I saw Bealman beaming.
How cats manage beaming I’ll wonder again.
Since Bealman was twenty, any beaming is plenty.
I loved my old Bealman, my frog fisher friend.
Bealman, Bealman, my meow dear Sealman,
Frog fisher & free.
It’s as if the past had taken physical form
and stepped into the present to greet him:
small, light-brown eyes, a tail that’s seen
better days, the forepaws holding a nut
they want to shake the sound from.
The squirrel stares him down
from a neighbour’s shedding tree
while he stares at what he cannot name.
Unlike other creatures he’s seen this morning,
there’s no desire to take its shape
and lose himself in a tighter skin,
the dizziness of impending change ...
He wonders how it tracked him down.
What binds the space between then and now?
Cobwebs sag, gloomy clouds
like a furrowed brow
loom over the house-
a kangaroo lies dying on
our country road .
A car's apologetic screech-
a deathly thud-
the twisted scrambling
of a broken creature,
and I, watching dumbstuck,
as it sprawls, drawing at
underbrush with frantic forepaws -
reluctant to let go of life
and earth
When others of its kind
came back to find its
carcass, devoid of warmth,
they shed opalescent tears of grief
Tears with the scent of eucalypts
and raindrops
A mute devotion
reflecting aspects of me.
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