Three poems featuring my twin black cats

Dear reader, I gathered these for my own prompt "Pets I have known." I couldn't write a poem this week, so I chose three from the past that feature Sabrina and Mariah, my twin black cats.  Read one of them or all.  Your presence here is welcome!  Love, Susan

1) After Abandonment

Sabrina and Mariah

My two bonded adult black cats take days

to come out from under the furniture.

Why should they trust this new household as home

after five years of insecurity?

How to forgive them for not loving me

immediately?  How to be patient?

They mirror my reactions to bad breaks  

that hold me lonely and isolated

under the furniture of my own life

I’ve hewn from pine and built quite sound and strong.

How to forgive me for not loving them

unconditionally?  How be patient?

I know distrust holds back fullness of faith

humility would bring if I could swim

within the stream of human poverty

once more, take off my clothes and go under.

How to let go of outworn survival

techniques which keep us from knowing new depths?

I ask the two black cats to come on out

from hiding.  Let me hold you, please, let me

be of service to you—And love me, please,

don’t make me beg.  Don’t make me wait for you.

How to be patient with each other’s fears? 

How to negotiate our timeliness?

2) Cat Love

The moment twin rescue kitties decide

I’d left and returned often enough to

claim they own me, their personal masseuse,

head-scratcher servant who wakes to feed them.

The moment they sit in their tallest pose—

echoing each other's blackness—waiting for me.

The moment I submit to their purring

and linger longer in the lounging chair.

That’s when I recall waiting a long time

for the affection of a wild thing,

and I sit tall, too, so the three of us

are perfectly parallel in desire.

3) Something to Believe In

The black things running out of your peripheral vision?

Those are your cats, both wondering why you give up

playing catch-the-fast-thing after only two minutes, why

you are listening to songs from the 70s and 80s,

looking in ones you used to love for ones you can believe.

You wonder that those years were time spent and not wasted—

but what are you doing now?  Make more memories. Make salad.

Look into the neglected corners of your day for what you

will someday wish you had lived now.  Stand and dance, and

play catch-the-fast-thing, too, with your furry guardians.

For my prompt "Pets I have known" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

Trees take my breath away

 

Not every day, but always it is trees
who take my breath, that inhaled hold, that breath
that comes out in the sound of wow:
trees in bloom, trees laden with fruit, sole trees
in vast fields, crooked trees on seasides, and
forests full.  Oak and maple and linden
and eucalyptus, white pine and Swiss pine
and chestnut trees, too, and so many more.
Trees take my breath away.  One day I walked
into a gentle young wood to make friends
with the poplar and black walnut trees there.
I looked up halfway down a hill and noticed
I was in a clearing surrounded by
a circle of poplar trees, leaves touching
to create a canopy.  Wow!  I placed
myself in the circle’s leaf-carpeted
center and introduced myself.  I asked
to know them. Silent, I waited.  I moved
to lean on a poplar tree to thank it,
to hug and praise it.  Touching, I felt touched.
A huge thing, to be aware of solid
strength and love as trees take my breath away.

 

For Sumana's prompt "When Nature takes your breath away" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

To dream of democracy

source

Ah, yesterday!  How I loved long treks
to the mountain top, to city centers,
around vast pools of imagination.
Everything seemed possible to me.
(except the loss of democracy).
 
Today, I sit and contemplate the past,
and walk from the back door to the front door
of a small retirement community.
I write poems soaked with hope and history,
and carry signs someone else has written
to the busy edge of our property.
They say “Honk if you love democracy.”
 
Tomorrow, downsizing for nursing care
I’ll need someone to push my wheelchair,
or stay home with a window view and
memories and dreams to fill out the land—
one finally restored to sanity
yet still building trust in democracy.

For Mary's prompt "Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

April showers sonnet

 

 

Oak tree in early spring

Where is the rain?  The gentle showers that
bring May flowers are missing in action,
but spring flowers bloom and die anyway.
 
Daffodils and bleeding hearts nod at me
From a mason jar vase on the table.
Tulips open wide by neighbors' sidewalks.
 
Green hyacinths will soon become purple
And the small half buds on trees will unfurl
Into lavish shows of lofty green leaves.
 
The skies are grey with silver cloud cover,
And yet we have no rain.  It’s climate change
I’m told.  It’s 80 degrees too early.
 
We endure beauty in tolerant calm
and let beauty be anxiety’s balm.

For a Writers Circle prompt "showers."

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2026 Susan L. Chast

A trickle, a stream, a river

 

source

 

This poem is a trickle
In the vast sea of meaning
A break in the habit that dulls dawn
and puts days on automatic.
 
This poem is a stream in
and out of my soul; a gift to
us all from the liminal unlimited
source of life and breath.
 
This poem is a river
Swarming with water life
in it and on it, fishes and
spiders, dragonflies, and birds.
 
This poem holds memory
Hidden in the layers of water
From pure to polluted in our river
Of sound bites from war.
 
This poem is a reminder
That life wants to thrive and
wants us to notice, that life
Is urgent and insistent.
 
This poem is a truth
that we take life and give it,
that we owe the world our voices
rich from the surround of love.

 

For Sherry's prompt "This poem" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

Two faces of poetry

 

“The work of a mature human being is to carry grief in one hand 

and gratitude in the other and to be stretched 

large by these two things.”

~Francis Weller

Like the masks of comedy and tragedy,
poetry wears our grief and gratitude,
expanding to fit the world we live in. 
 
A quick-change artist, it shows one face
while the other is waiting in the wings,
ready to enter whenever the first wavers.
 
Thus, poems actively grieve the death of both
innocents and guilty, while reinforcing
their hearts with spring dew and flowers.
 
Poems rue the destruction of all we know
while thanking God for life and words. Looking
up at corpses, poems burst into tears.
 
Gratitude for humor, some quite biting.
Grief for our planet, awe for astronauts.
Pauses to find an exit and an end.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2026 Susan L. Chast