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BLUEBElL AMONG THE SABLES
The visitor came clothed with sables,
My dark and social friend.
The afternoon prospered after its kind.
But they bore me, those intimate parliaments,
Those tea-times wear my heart away.
So I took half my pleasure in the sables
Which flowed across her arm, the chair, the floor,
Sleek and fathomless like contemplative,
Living animals, the deep elect,
In ceremonious most limp obedience.
But the dark skins did move, she felt them creep:
"My God! My sables!"
Indeed they were alive with a new life,
The sombre swiftly shot with quick and silver
Fur within fur. It was Bluebell, my beautiful,
My small and little cat pounding the sables.
Flat on her spine she tumbled them,
Shaking their kindly
tails
between her teeth.
"My furs! Your cat!" . . .
I said, "No need for alarm.
Those dead pelts can't cause Bluebell any harm."
(I am a human female and do not
possess
any sables.)
Poor soul, this put her in the wrong,
As
one who somehow fails the higher vision,
She was meek: "They cost the earth, my furs."
I stroked the comical creature, she the sables,
And all came even.
For she said there was no damage, no damage.
It
may be she had profit of the event;