Learning to be more catty

 

If like a cat, I had nine lives, that is, eight

more to go, I’d choose to be married to you

for seven as the sacred texts indicate

anyway, maybe I’d swap to a man to

see if I liked it in one, and then change back.

For the last, I’d take that round-the-world trip, not

in eighty days though. I’d find a way to pack

the important things. I’d learn to sail a boat,

to grow a tree from seed, to write in blank verse.

I’d waste less days searching for that perfect rhyme,

fill them instead with the words of foremothers.

Read more Bengali poets from scratch this time.

I’d live more deep, look more closely at the dew.

Leave more space for wonder. Leave more space for you.

November happens to be a month of personal celebrations of various kinds. This week,  I'm celebrating through the writing of a series of nine sonnets, here is the first of them. A celebration and a thanksgiving for the guy who's stuck around staunchly for more than half my life...despite the shortage of elbow room...