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Poetry
Fantasy
I measure periods in my life
Not by artistic shades, nor whom I've dated,
Not by the letters that trail my name like a tail,
Nor even by university and position.
I mark my calendar in cats,
Successes tied to the advent of fond felines
Who purred me well, streaked luck across my path,
Accompanied me in secret to the conferences
Where I made a sleek, cultured impression and won awards
For the pedigree of my papers.
My failures, too, date back
To cats I hurt by accident in the road,
To feline friends I lost to cancer or age,
To furry sons who felt themselves slighted
When I left them at home for dates or for vacations.
When Edgar died, I got laid off and had to move,
Leaving behind that earthly shell of comfort.
With exhausted savings after two years of searching,
I moved to a studio walkup in a cheaper city.
Daphne followed me from the parking lot
to my apartment door as I carried boxes.
Though I had little enough, I took her in.
Her enthusiastic purr enveloped me;
I got three job offers that very day.
My current appointment as chair I owe to Chloe,
Whose friendly rumble inspires ruminations,
And whose warm presence in my lap
Oddly coincides with fortuitous phone calls.
I haven't been away for seven years—
Not since Little Einstein sauntered up my walk,
One giant fuzzball of frizzy hair,
And scratched out the equation that earned him entrance
Among the weeds of my half-dead flower garden:
Energy and mass have equivalence for a cat
Who moves at the speed of light.
One had to look closely to decipher
Which marks were Es and which were Ms,
and which were simply Greek,
Epsilon and Sigma appearing much the same.
Mu, of course, was the one thing he could say,
A self-satisfied purr as he rolled in the dust,
Obscuring his secret code,
To indicate that the cat's final word on any subject
Always lay at the heart of the matter.
His tail points out directions for my research;
His fang marks are points to clarify.
I wouldn't want to miss a single word.
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Copyright 2010, Lyn C. A. Gardner. All rights reserved. With master's degrees in English literature and library science, Lyn C. A. Gardner has served as editor at a private maritime museum and cataloger for a public library. Thus far, the author has had stories, poems, art, and articles published in venues like Abyss & Apex, Challenging Destiny, The Doom of Camelot, Doorways Magazine, Horror Garage, The Leading Edge, Legends of the Pendragon, Mythic Delirium, New Myths, Not One of Us, Star*Line, Strange Horizons, Sybil's Garage, Talebones, and Tales of the Talisman, among others. Two stories and a poem earned honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (12th, 13th, and 15th editions). Gardner is a graduate of the 2004 Clarion West Writers Workshop. For more information, visit www.gardnercastle.com.
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