cat tanka

I just glanced over three tanka I'd written in the last couple of days and noticed that each had something to do with cats. (For those who don't happen to know, the tanka is a five-line Japanese poetic form from which the haiku [the first three lines] was derived. The 31 syllables in a tanka are divided 5-7-5-7-7.)

hummingbird hovers
just above somnolent cats
too warm to notice.
What images are dancing
just beyond my heat-slowed brain?


summer nights the cat
sits by the window, ears cocked,
waiting for the ghosts
who stroll on the balcony
scentless, nameless, and unseen.


too skinny herself,
the little mother protects
her kittens, growling
when we pass. Two meals a day
will not buy her off, she says.