“senile cat”

Upon a battered, sunlit sill he lays—  
Sir Whiskerly, the elder of my days,  
A furrier ghost of alley feuds and pride,  
He dreams in drifting motes, his eyes half wide.  

His ear-tips tremble at each softened sound—  
A memory of mice once deftly found,  
Yet now his world moves gentle, slow, and thin,  
As twilight’s hush creeps softly in his skin.  

He stalks in circles for a patch of sun,  
Forgetting where his evening nap begun;  
In tangled yarn and dust he weaves his track,  
His thoughts—a thread too slender to tie back.  

I watch him blink at corners of the room,  
Entranced by walls alive in quiet gloom,  
A soldier lost, returning from his quest,  
His whiskers silvered, curled upon his chest.  

Yet still he finds a purr—fragile, sincere—  
And in its tremble hums a distant year;  
Within his clouded gaze, I sometimes see  
A kitten, leaping through the memory.  

So let him wander through his gentle haze,  
Grant him his sun and soft autumnal days—  
For though his world grows scatter’d, thin, askew,  
The heart of that old hunter still beats true.

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