It's Still Life

The Old Woman Considers the Weight of Absence

the old woman with no cat
has no cat to call her own,
but her neighbour’s cat
has claimed her as its own.

she watches the cat and feels
the weight of absence,
and how it settles quiet
in the hollow of a room.

the old woman remembers
the heft of a living thing, the purr
that once vibrated her bones.

now, there is only this:
the old woman’s silence,
which is not surrender,
but a kind of tending.

she tends to the view.
she tends to the absence.
she tends to the cat
who will never be hers.