What Do You Take Me For
Equally, my cat bats
at the rubber band
I hold above her
and its shadow on
the off-white carpet.
Both seem to reach
for her, then recoil
from under her paw.
The moon glows
when we look at it
through the darkness
at our end, even though
gray rock does not
make light and spill
it down onto us.
We don’t respond to
the thing; we respond
to what it looks like
to us. What do you
take me for, every
circumstance asks, and
we answer by reacting.
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7 comments:
That is so true, Hannah. Everything is colored by the eyes that are looking.
Good poem!
"We don't respond to // the thing; we respond / to what it looks like// to us." The essence of perception and what a mind-bender: what's real, what's not, how do we know? Always has fascinated me.
My Westie the other day at the vets barked his head off at a bronze cat perched in the window. Oddly, a bronze dog on the floor got no reaction.
Objectivity, sometimes, is no object.
Good read.
My goodness, this is so profound...what do we take each circumstance for...the cat knows and reacts right away as it sees...what a great invitation to check one's perception before one reacts...you are incredible, sorry that I keep saying this to you. : )
I love the playfulness of this poem and that image. There was a lunar eclipse in the wee hours Saturday morning, did you know?
As usual, you make me think, when I read your poems. We react to the light of the moon, thinking that light a comforting friend, but the moon itself is a cold grey stone. We love it for its glow, and the faces it makes; but it's the light that makes it "live."
The final two stanzas really nail it. A great write.
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