That kiss that burned one Tuesday, four a.m.,
Won't make it into any bulletin,
Nor that flicker-flash of  bird, that garden time,
Nor his shameful need, nor the white wine
Left in the glass, obituaries of hours
Unmourned at cards, some ode to spring
Her blinking heart sang, nor childish chores
Of Sundays drained. Not light. Not anything.

No and no and no. Dim and dim,
A vacant voice pronounces prayers at him
While worlds wane small as words some woman said
Meant hope or love. Then no one else is there
Who peers through dark. Who weeps, or blanks of care,
Or hardly knows him, writing he is dead.

A gesture's worth a thousand words,
intimations of the body articulate:
my gas-passing interrogatives,
your inquisitive belches, remember?

At first, such unspoken jokes seemed crude,
though useful. So we refined them,
and from trees at night mock owl-calls homed you in.
Do you remember eyebrows, intelligent as lips?

In time, I developed tics, snarls, an expert shrug,
a professional groan. And I grew to resent
your sighs, your phony, irritated coughing fits,
the critical commentaries of your silences.

Say you want a cat. A dog's too easy,
would wag when wag is inappropriate,
and slobber on the guests. You'll take the cat,
so different and strange, it drives you crazy,

its shiftlessness, its ins-and-outs, its chi.
You call. It does not come. Is this a pet,
this Dharma ***? You say you can't accept
its vacant gaze, its scorn, who yearned to be

at home with feral grace, with all you're not.
But you're a Body safely locked from Mind,
that Problem no Mind solves. This point's defined
for you by ****, who's not the pet you thought

but Otherness, one owned by God, or none.
Cat sleeps for hours, wants out. A job well done.