by Ron Vincent

Created on: May 05, 2008

In the company of cats

The house is empty.
For the first time
I can hear a mockingbird sing
instead of a rapper's scream.
My daughter's rage
at a boyfriend's folly
is gone and in its place
I can hear the cats lap cream.

The house is empty.
My son is at college
writing an essay about
Mom cooking green beans
with bacon on the stove,
now gone cold.

His room is bare,
with only a hint

of past visits
and wisps of a younger ghost
playing soccer
on crisp Saturday mornings
at Beyer Park.

My daughter's room is Katrina
writ large,
a cataclysm.

The house is silent for now,
but even in her absence,
her clothes heaped floor
and paper strewn desk
scream her presence.

In four months she will be gone
to a college in Southern California,
A Camelot on the Pacific
with soft breezes,
wide streets,
and different dreams.

The cats miss her already.
The older one mourns
the hours Becky held her close
as she slept in her lap.
Lily the younger purrs at Becky's voice
and pouts as the dervish of a young woman
rushes past to take a shower,
put on make-up
and dream of Santa Barbara.

Becky has left again
to spend the night
with a girlfriend,
a sleepover
that mimes the moment
when she will sleep
four hundred miles away.

The cats sleep with me now
and wake me late at night
to complain
that the house is empty.

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