“February”- Margaret Atwood
“Cherry blossoms have bloomed at the corner of Nelson and Bute in Vancouver, B.C., February 11, 2015”
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Vancouver has been unimpeachable this
February, my sister through her
intercession with my dad, who is as close
to us as heaven, must’ve brought along
with her the sun and the unfettered blue
sky from her otherwise wintry home
there has been rain but sparsely here,
just enough to wean spring blossoms
out of hiding, as pictured above
but we are aware that not everywhere is
the same
here’s what Margaret Atwood thinks of
February
____________
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
____________
truly
Richard
Richibi's Weblog 