Variations on House Jazz for a Lazy Sunday

One.

The ginger cat, posing like a sphinx
on the gray front stoop,
fives and tens stuffed in the glass vase on Mary Jo’s mantel,
Michael Royal’s thin fingers
on the clean white keys, folding chairs

in the red kitchen, in the green salon,
on the sloping screen porch,
night’s emerging heat,
its low music, house wine,
bourbon’s amber eye,

smoke growing thick, the blue door
propped open for air, circulating
as each hour weeps,
the cat cries, purrs, rubs herself
shamelessly

meandering through ankles and calves,
the stranger’s curves, hand sliding
slowly, eyes closing
involuntarily,
to Elsa and The Peacock.

Two.

The dog howls at four a.m, stirs again at nine;
measuring sugar for my black brew, noting
the morning as it lodges behind
persistent clouds, the gray front,
the closed-off room, slatted shutters, broken –

French doors hesitate to give
to the splintering deck and dawn announces herself
as I stretch my legs beneath cotton sheets, rub
my tender calves, my thighs,
raise myself to look right again,

propped on pillows, turning a page, scratching a line
in the good company of papers and pen
already whistling their wants, their bristle and coo, hedging
the usual Sunday stock and trade:
stack of bills to address before

cable, phone, and electric write me off, leave me
incommunicado as I concede to yielding the day’s tasks,
paying later for my light, this current,
the rippling jazz running its course
and I languish, replaying the tape –

Elsa, The Peacock, shameless
slinky curves humming as the blue door closes
on what’s left of night,
the ginger cat, posed like a sphinx
on the edge of the bed.

© D. A. Wolf

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