Up With The Birds

I notice the cat out the corner of my eye.
I'd never seen it before;
it was usually just an old lad sitting,
staring out at the street
from his tiny, impeccable living room.

Up with the birds,
Day after day.

The cat stares manic,
pressed to the window pane
and I follow it's gaze
to a crow on top of a lamp post.

I find it the strangest sight somehow.
A trapped cat straining
for a bird on a wire,
thirty feet in the air.

But then I would.
I have never been a cat.

I saw the old guy again
the next morning,
standing at the window,
squinting at the yellowing pages
of a book in the early daylight.
The cat out of sight,laying in wait for less troublesome prey,
or maybe just asleep.

The cat and the old man don't appear for me anymore.
Maybe they got a new agent and a better gig,
something better than
providing momentary entertainment
for half awake drudges,
preparing to spend their day going slowly mad,
battering their empty heads against their
empty desks for the benefit of
a strange little man who
can't stop scratching
his scalp.