Before The Zoetropes Of Cats Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I like the sounds you make that I cannot hear,
I try to fathom your shadows like cats purring in the rain,
The pets who are not afraid and who are the queens of men:
And I have slept on your roof,
And skipped school to remember you, but the days do not
Get any easier,
Like the hard worlds like cairns on the bare naked mountains
Who summits always seem to slip away out of view:
But A-, you are here, and I know there
Are paths leading up to you that I can find,
And sometimes I can still smell you in my house, and remember
The appropriate verses to call you down from the sky,
And away from that faithless lovemaking you must be making even
Now in your house,
With your soul so far away from your body:
For she is here, looking over my shoulder,
And becoming my muse in this glow from the lights in the sky,
As the rain comes down through the street lights before the zoetropes
Of cats prowling and making love in the street.