Fire (For my cat Namtang)

Who placed

the host of fireflies

in our dark rooms

as babes that gave us

such joy to watch

as they ricocheted,

caromed and pinged

until we took them

for what they were and

made them words?

What painter

colored this cat with sable

blacks, splashes of white

then finished with drips 

of school-boy browns 

until she looked more 

an abstraction than

a lowly living cat.

And what old man

seeing her sitting on

the fence below the glorious

orchids with no paw even

close to being the same,

though mostly brown, 
could name her

anything but fire.

All rights reserved by the author Forrest Greenwood.

This is our cat Namtang which in Thai means sugar or the color brown.  The little females named her.