2008/bells

The church bells chime, 7 a.m.
You read the Sunday paper
on the porch.
I tell you that we can tell by the cat,
and how we treat the cat,
how things are.
All winter long we kept him inside,
thinking perhaps, that’s how
his life would be from now on.
Sleeping on this cushion
or that,
rousing at mid-day to stare
at a bird through glass.
But his freedom has returned.
He howls to go out, and
remembers where he lives
to come back.
Waiting on the roof at the back door
if he has gone out the front.
I can’t see him and know
as I could at the old house.
He is patient as he trains me.
You can’t have everything in your life change
and not have a few things be different,
I think, standing at the sink.
The cat seems to know that.

4/13/08