In the car-park border,

By bright, mid-day light,

With pea-green eyes’ cool sight,

A white cat is hunting, his paw-step

Touchy among the lizard-skinned

cacti sprouts whose leaves burst

Through the limestone chippings

Sprinkled on the bark mulch strip.

It’s there that some dark little  prey

Is making now its getaway.

White cat pauses before the pounce,

He eyes the spines that ruff the fleshy plants,

 Has second thoughts, sneezes his whim away,

 reverts to an aimless prowl. In that moment

I too was  hunting, through the scattered years

We have spent apart, the insect reason why,

 that this day, today of all days , I forgot

It is your birthday. But to catch the answer

To my idle quiz, my mind would need  scrape

Through spikes, that are tears disowned,

 like stalacmites to stony points now grown,

ripe to rip the thin-stretched truths

which glove my coward heart.. I defect,

light a cigarette,turn the car around,

drive back the way I came.