Bearer of Gifts
poems by Damaris West
No Mystery
My cat is not a one for mystery.
His eyes, black in the half-light,
full of hidden windings to the unexpected
pounce, reckon with practicalities.
Sometimes I hear what his ears twitch at;
sometimes I see the thread swing,
the shadow flick,
the woodlouse tickle along the wall.
Other times the wind whispers privately to him;
the sunspot shivers at his eye level.
His senses are fed with such a store
of stimuli that he is charged,
an electric cat,
possessed by a reality
more real than my reality,
and worlds beyond me.
Retriever Puppy
Bearer of gifts
he won’t give over
(waste bins, tea towels,)
brown eyes challenging
or pleading for adventures,
take him to the beach
and he will swallow
brine and dead fish with the same
impunity as face cream,
curried beans and snails.
Lover of legs,
pouncer in puddles,
leaper through bramble half-hoops,
his tail is still
a far more worthwhile quarry than
the mocking scuts of rabbits
he dreams of, stretched
twitching across the duvet,
presumptuously welcome,
floppy, dopey and dear.
Rubber Dog
Starry-eyed sleeve-tugger,
crotch-sniffer,
bottom-butter,
player of chicken
with the postman’s van,
rubber dog with springs
for legs, your paws reach
shoulder-height and yet your hug
is courteous and timely
like your dinner-time petitions.
Calmest of hearth-companions,
a solo violin draws
from you a joyful
exaggerated fanfare
of a howl, quite different
from the yodel that you aim
at the hillside where, though bristling
like a wolf, you still respond
to the summoning whistle, a white
blur bursting from the dark.
Damaris West's poetry has been published in many magazines and anthologies. She has often written about her pets. In England, originally, she was a lover of cats, but it was her first dog, the retriever puppy of the poem (the photo shows him a little older, but just as lively) who accompanied her to Italy where she lived with her husband in the Umbrian countryside. Over the thirteen years of their stay, they adopted five rescue puppies. Rubber dog, an Italian spinone, was one of them. You can visit Damaris at https://damariswest.site123.me