Plebeian on the Front Porch

The last rays of sunlight stretch across the lawn.

Angry scrub jays fill the trees with noise this evening,

scolding our cat, who sits on the front porch with me,

feigning innocence.  There are only four or five of them,

but they cry out like a choir of demons tormenting

 

a damned soul in Dante's hell.  Our cat has been feasting

on their young all summer long and they've had enough.

In recent weeks they have gone on the offensive,

swooping in like kamikazes to peck at her with their sharp beaks.

I have dabbed her wounds with hydrogen peroxide

 

and, like an old fight trainer in her corner, offered advice

on how to dodge them and swipe back with her claws.

It's a betrayal of the poet's pacifist code to confess

my partisanship, I know.  According to ancient tradition,

I'm supposed to praise the beauty of the birds

 

and the delicacy of their song, to decry the cruelty

of our predatory nature as symbolized by my cat.

I swear if they were doves or sparrows or purple martins

I would urge diplomacy, but the cries of the scrub jays

are so offensive that I am glad to root for the brutal kill.

 

I have found myself scooping what's left of their small corpses

onto the spade and lecturing them on the way to the garbage can:

"If you only knew when to keep your mouth shut,

it might not have come to this."  A little later,

when the sky has darkened and the yellow moon

 

charges the raucous jays to settle into their nests, my cat

will curl herself into a harmless ball at the foot of my bed,

and the crickets will call a truce.  Like a sleepy crowd

huddled around the piano of Hoagy Carmichael,

they will croon us up the lazy river towards our dreams.

© copyright 2008 David Denny

__________

Published in Chiron Review

__________

Click here for next poem: Marc Chagall Comes to Cupertino, California