The Cat Sprang Up (poem)

The Cat Sprang Up

Since largely we are not little match girls

And because the habit of sneaking asks of us

That any wisp of fellow-feeling

Be snuffed and whisked aside in the cup and ball game

The atom shot from the huddled mass to huddle in a doorway

would gather kindling, rather, to assemble a torch

She waves it at the power his position affords

The high horse proven an untenable seat

First, your city hall she says

Jail me for the night and feed me gruel

You’d be surprised

He feels unqualified to take advice

Are they like that, there at the periphery of sight?

Here she is using imagery of violence

All workings of the human mind

Foreign to him, since he handed his own

To a coterie of nibbling mice

Uncollected Poems

(2017, Stephanie Foster)