If Not for Letters
of greeting, longing, leaving, thanking, celebrating,
news, hellos, goodbyes, apologies, forgiveness
scrawled on gold embossed stationery, simple-lined
composition paper, brittle onion skin,
perfumed parchment, art cards, postcards,
backsides of boarding passes, grocery lists,
first drafts, defunct logos
scripted in indelible all-identifying scrolls, dips, slants,
misspellings like fingerprints before
the quick hit-in-the-cloud of email,
bantering bouts of text messages, serif fonts,
a handy send unsend to retract.
If not for heart spans, lifespans
tied with ribbons, banded in boxes, squirreled away
in attics, bottom drawers, the dark corners of closets.
If not for tongueless words like necklaced jewels
tucked under pillows, slipped into suitcases, jacket pockets
sent afar to be ever near.
Why I Wouldn’t Fall in Love Again
until you made me remember why I never got another cat
or want to know again that wrung-out loss;
how she slept nestled to my hip the night before,
how she could barely eat or groom herself, the carcinoma
conquering her mouth;
how she stayed longer than she wished or wanted or ever thought
a poor 18-year-old cat could for me.
How I dug her grave, placed her best-loved toys in towel-cushioned
dirt, before the ride to the vet;
how I held her, repeated I love you, baby kitty while the doc
slid the needle in her hind leg; how she writhed-mewed
then settled into leaving.
How I swathed her cooling body in a pillowcase, held her
in my lap on the ride home, my newly sober mother driving,
my head thrown back, wailing.
How like an overtired, overworked gravedigger, a bereaved mother
I tendered her body to the towel, placed her heartthrob toy on her chest
and shoveled.
How there was nothing left to do but feel, to cry, allow the inside
turning out, Mom saying, Times like this, I wish I still drank.
Reprise
November strums minor chords, riffs
and strips color, shape, identity.
The naked time rattles with lights and tinsel
indulgence and sleep, décor and descent
into the perennial hollow.
Another grave, another ending
another spin in sod with tubers and bulbs,
another thaw with tree sap.
Another budding.
Sway Me
You Sadie Hawkins me to the floor,
we tiptoe, side-shimmy, find the end
of a maze, two-step into each other.
We tango through a cancer diagnosis,
rhumba to the rhythmic beat of MRIs,
radiation, midnight pacing. We pause,
curtsey-bow, listen for a new beat,
join hands, connect shoulder to waist
in a sexy quickstep forward
because there is no going back.
I know you have two left feet,
can’t carry a tune, but baby, together we will
cha-cha-merengue till closing time.
*****
Catherine Arra lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where she teaches part-time, and facilitates local writing groups. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections and four chapbooks. Recent work appears in San Pedro River Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Origami Poems Project, Stone Circle Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Unbroken, Impspired, and Unleashed Lit.. Find her at www.catherinearra.com
