"She sights a Bird - she
chuckles -"
poem by Emily Dickinson (about 1862)
She sights a Bird - she chuckles -
She flattens - then she crawls -
She runs without the look of feet -
Her eyes increase to Balls -
Her Jaws stir - twitching - hungry -
Her Teeth can hardly stand -
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first -
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,
The Hopes so juicy ripening -
You almost bathed your Tongue -
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes -
And fled with every one -
Poem #507, from The
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited
by Thomas H. Johnson (Little, Brown),
copyright 1955 by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College
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The great - is she the greatest? - American poet Emily
Dickinson wrote this poem during her most productive
time, the Civil War (1861-65). Unlike in many of her
poems at this time, death does not take place, either
actually or in the imagination, but is avoided. Is the
poet just sharpening her pen point before resuming her
magical exploration of Heaven and Earth? I can't imagine
a more perfect warm up. And the conclusion: say it out loud:
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes -
And fled with every one -
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From what I've gleaned from her poems - I've read
about 200 of her more than 1700, some scores of times,
and memorized many - Dickinson did not especially like
cats, maybe because she loved birds, which she
identified with in at least one poem. The funniest lines
I have read by her are in the poem that begins "I cannot
dance upon my toes" (poem #326, written about 1862):
And though I had no Gown of Gauze -
No Ringlet, to my Hair,
Nor hopped to Audiences - like Birds,
One Claw upon the Air,
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I devoured a great biography of the poet that appeared
in 2001, My Wars Are Laid Away in
Books, by Alfred Habegger (Random House, New
York). I know of few lives so unremarkable that were so
remarkable.
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The Supreme Kitten
The magnificent The Supreme Kitten, aka Moritz
Jablowski, was born in my back yard in the
summer of 2000 to the beautiful and feral Mrs.
Jablowski, but his father is unknown. Calling
Mr. Jablowski!
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Mrs. Mildred Jablowski
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Teeger Jablowski, a sister to The
Supreme Kitten.
In July, 2002, something broke
Teeger's tail, maybe a car, and I had
most of it amputated. She's now an
indoor cat with a tail the size of a
Vienna sausage. Teeger's at the bottom
of every pecking order but mine. (She
died at 17 in 2017.) (All photos by
Harry Finley)
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