Ed Meek
Poetry
Ed Meek has had poems in The American Poetry Journal, The Sun, Plume, and The Paris Review. His new book, High Tide, is available at Aubadepublishing.com. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife and dog, Mookie, whom he will never trade.
Climate Change
You woke me up to talk again
about the need to move
when our cat, Isis,
proud as a peacock,
presented us
with a purple finch
she must’ve caught
outside the window
of our cottage on the coast.
She leapt onto the bed
and dropped her gift
between the white silk sheets.
The bird was as stiff
as a homeless drunk in winter.
Isis returned to her perch on the ledge
and purred with the satisfaction
of a job well done,
while the finch, to our delight,
popped up to its feet,
took to the air and flew out the window.
Was it stunned or playing possum? I wondered.
We have to talk, you said
as I rolled back over feigning sleep.
about the need to move
when our cat, Isis,
proud as a peacock,
presented us
with a purple finch
she must’ve caught
outside the window
of our cottage on the coast.
She leapt onto the bed
and dropped her gift
between the white silk sheets.
The bird was as stiff
as a homeless drunk in winter.
Isis returned to her perch on the ledge
and purred with the satisfaction
of a job well done,
while the finch, to our delight,
popped up to its feet,
took to the air and flew out the window.
Was it stunned or playing possum? I wondered.
We have to talk, you said
as I rolled back over feigning sleep.
“ We live in Somerville, Massachusetts. Not on the coast but not far from it, and we've talked about moving inland. Our cat, Isis, did catch a bird and present it to us. It seemed to be dead but was just stunned and it popped up and flew away. I was thinking that many of us are kind of stunned, not sure what to do about climate change and that we keep putting action off even though we know we have to deal with it. ”
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