Couplets in Search of the Feline Soul

To Boycat, whose desires I do my best to tend daily

I will do what I can do to fathom the unfathomable surfaces
and depths of you – the middle layers, too: I want to think you get

along without me fine; on circumstantial evidence, it’s true; although
the hours spent alone must surely have effect: patterns without time,

perhaps: sounds and smells of passing afternoon and evening,
night and dawn: and all the interstitial small familiarities and goings-on

that come of constancy – of living in this studio apartment: sweet,
I want to think, with sleep, so lavishly resorted to I trust it gives you

all the luxury of knowing that you’re doing what you want to do:
includes some sense, I hope, in which I fit the fitness of your life –

direct and circumspect – by reappearing daily in the morning
and delivering my body to you, dropping to all fours, and fawning over

your black flanks in full subservience to your felinity: and then the milk,
of course, your ritual of gutturally wailing for the milk: I want to think

that I’m a help at least in this, that after offering my human kiss I can
restore you with that longed-for bowl of bliss, replenished with its cold

elixir – while I fix your litter box and otherwise attend to what it is my
lot to do for you: I’d like to think that when I leave, you’re not relieved;

and yet I’d like to think you don’t wish too much that I wouldn’t go.
Today you sang your gutturalities – bereft and low – and kept them

going when I left: I think you knew I stood there listening, outside
the door, not feeling strong. Unless I’ve got the whole thing wrong.

.