Bonsai
All this week I seem to be floating
from one important meeting to the next.
The cat tries to inform me the dish
is empty. The paper-lady drives
her immense van backwards down the street,
reaching over her shoulder where her son
keeps handing up the day’s news, wrapped
in plastic for its brief flight out the window.
How could you be so many
hundreds of miles away?
I should not complain—and believe me,
most of the time I don’t—but this stretch
of weather, its weary piles of snow
slumped on each street corner
into April, is reason enough.
I have the cat’s attention, or what’s left
of it. Now he is asleep on the couch,
curled tight against my legs.
He barely lifts his head, doesn’t
turn when my phone rings at last,
and it’s you at the other end
of the day, down the eastern
seaboard in sunny FL,
five meetings with other people
closer to your flight home.
So there’s half of today,
tomorrow, and most of Friday
to get through till you return.
The cat keeps trying to herd me
toward the empty dish, but I’ll have
none of it. I’d get up if I weren’t so busy
trying to make this small tree grow.
David McCann taught Korean literature until retiring 2 years ago. His new collection, Same Bird, was published by Moon Pie Press in 2016.