Sam

Every morning
Sam begs at his bowl
for treats.
He thinks he is a cool-cat
when he swindles an extra dose
from whoever sleeps in.

A slippery slope, I know.
But in old age
shouldn’t 
in the final act
one be spoilt?

He once filled his skin.
Now I feel every fibre.
We think he leapt from a post
lined with barbed wire
and tore his underside open
like paper.

He came to me exactly as usual 
but with a smooth wet patch on his breast
and when we turned him over to clean it
he knew
translation 
cap of hydrogen peroxide.

Maybe if I glanced upon him
for the first time today
I would say
That’s an old cat.

He is a decade younger than me
yet twice as old.

Is it cruel?

Every summer night when I
release him to the elements 
I wonder of his nocturnal existence. 
Wide awake under cover of darkness
must be an entirely different world
from the wake of day.

He feels
the mottled quiet
and danger of
the dark.

I stepped out during a thunderstorm once
an unfinished house framed
and through the dark holes where
windows and doors would soon fit
something was stirring.

And Sam
on padded paws returned 
to watch the moat 
from his castle.

Later 
a mouse will make a great dash
through the high grass
easily caught
leaving behind only its liver.