! A Life In The Day Of Poem by Michael Shepherd

It was a late, late night;
a wild, wild night;

primitive urges which people
might never have suspected of you
demanding to be slaked,
and slaked and slaked and slaked again

copulation and
population meeting
more than once in ways
no way related to
planned parenthood

but that’s already in
the distant past – the nights
are your own; the day
belongs to others;

it’s morning now; you open
an eye or two; stretch
luxuriously without a hint
of shame; then
a quick grooming – the fancy stuff
can wait til later..
and deal with what your inside
wants to put outside..

maybe a quick stroll in the garden
before or after breakfast
to see what’s new; a few
moments to collect yourself; then
the business of the day

which seems to consist largely
for you, of satisfying the needs
of those strange and otherly
human beings with their irrational
urges for love, pleasure,
consolation, power, control -
compensation for the burden
of being a human being…
you do your best
to doze through this farrago;

you might call it life’s office politics
if you knew what that phrase meant

but you’re a cat,
and know no other life.