[Kay Syrah]

Some moments more than others

Rainlight
reflections always
remind me
that direction
isn’t critical to
to the pattern
of recollection for,

When dusk fell
upon our shoulders
we wore its cape
of colours, refracted
subtracted borrowed
from the spectrum

of the golden warm
candlelight café and grappa
as I broke down
laughing at the swirl
of you

that defied the
the cold rain but
needed its enhancement
to glaze the pavement mirror

Goodbye is such a shame
but still it was repeated up
in every broken plane
silvered by watered skies
gilded, with the incandescent
tease of pain.

And I saw you
a thousand times
walking away,
which cracked me up

cause I love still the
kaleidoscope of your
memory, the fragments
that rearrange and
and settle down
always in a design
like no other.

[Kay Syrah]

Studio cats

Cats curl parenthetically
around the urban legends
that cross over the steps
of the old store
that they guard like
sleep takes a dream
for granted knowing
that some good stories pass
the test of time if not truth.

Like churches that have kept
their faces clean
against all odds
and spires that reach
vaguely skyward
in Lanenstone
and attenuated
arches they bell the toll
recorded on sooty bricks
and in city blocks.

Ringed with smoke stacks
and blues bars,
the tones of tell
it to someone who cares
confessions consign
those lacking nine lives
to a category of dereliction
of morality, sins of….
indiscretion, that fall
with a human name
snow and ash upon

every edifice
that designs to
collar the
payday dollar.

But the best stories still
are found in the asides that
cats holler, in deep night
shades outside the photographer’s
studio that occupies
the old building now and
advertises,wedding portraits ,
hopeful smiles for posterity
which are not predictive
of prosperity or happiness
for that matter

but having traded glass plates
for plate glass fronts,
bread and butter for
the unsure pay of predictable
celebrations in artful albums
he plays the shades of cats
future, present and past
and salutes time, as really
the only merchant who
prospers tomorrow
over the threshold,
a photojournalist that has
no choice but to hope
to catch a moment
between ecstasy and angst
and make it memorable

But cats slide into the spaces
between the feral and the fed and
circle the abandoned and
the wed, with the protective
grace, that forgives and records
in sgrafitto the vows
exchanged marking what
is scratched in a lottery
ticket prayer and recording
in spray can artistry the graffiti
that blooms in spite of
the gleam and glow
of an important
plaque designating
the building marked
for historical registry.

between the idea and the form
is laid the beginning and the end
of all dreams, but the sinuous curl
of cats punctuates the story
that is wafered with
the reality of the scars
of distress
that manifest hopes

stranded in dust
upon the stoop of
this particular history

and cats remember
to carefully clean
the feet that they always
land upon, before entering, as if
memory is easily offered,
and forgetting is is dispatched
to doorstep absolution