Wholely Other Poem by Kim Doyle

All I have to do is watch the cats
and I know when my wife arrives home.
I don’t hear her at the side door but they do,
even before she touches the knob.
Off they go to meet and greet.
I force myself to remember they are nothing
but stimulus/response machines.
There is no love, no love lost. It is as if
their hyper-acute sensing costs them
with the absence of higher emotions.
All this cogitating is within human skin.
I, a closed system as well, can’t tell what
drives my drives. The cat and I thrive,
closer to each other than I know;
each, in our way, unconsciously alive.