Let me start a thread
that avoids a link to a page
that might be a promotion
or political and unacceptable
and therefore of less importance.
So here’s a cat.
Not just a cat, but a
leaping cat, to distract and amuse you
no time to watch it all, skip
to a seasonal meme or a
yes, wonderful landscape
of dreams of a place you might
have been or want to escape to.
Any place but here, because
it’s too hard to consider
genocide
just for a moment choose what
to think, between brutality
and cultural oppression of any kind
because it is merely the way we do things
the traditions of millennia
maybe.
So we’ll stay here and wait
for intruders and, like a cat
pounce on killjoys who
rudely knock to disturb our peace
our place, our comfort.
Like what is a woman?
what is a dictator?
what is just and fair and
what is just
the way things need to be.
Let me show you a person
who carries kindness like
a hidden locket jewel, not
because she is an activist
or a leaping cat but because
she cannot belong where truth
hides in fear of what we know:
that we are all looking away.
© Andie Davidson 2024