Moon-filled Tongue
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Elaborate the movements as the cat
Performs his grooming in the feline night:
He flourishes his head and licks his matte
Fur into moon gloss from above. Lesser light
Is captured by the pressuring of tongue
And so the black coat shines despite twinned dark.
It is as if the unseen black is stung
To brightness so it seems a spread out spark
Is stretched by mouth and moon. He does not mean
To cause upheaval in the cosmos. He
Just wants his hair so clean it shows culled sheen
From heaven. That’s his serendipity.
The bathing that the midnight moonlight does
Performs a miracle with mere cat fuzz.
~ Phillip Whidden