A poem by Thomas Thornburg
the sick cat in the clowder calls,
(the little girl who loved her lost)
wanders in the alley, falls
and stiffens like a frozen coat;
a powder of November palls
on the despair of hunted dusks,
a dumb husk of hares;
that creature in the corner there
sprawling in the drunken chair
ringing silver on the table
has no business being here
and is in trouble.
1 response so far ↓
1 Stan // Aug 13, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Such an odd concatenation of images, the cat, the hares, the drunk; and the collective nouns–clowder of cats I’d never heard or read; husk of hares, I’d heard but forgotten until reminded here.
And it adds up to quite a despairingly numb moment. Quite a poem.
Just for fun, here’s a list of collective nouns for a number of animals: http://rinkworks.com/words/collective.shtml
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