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The Cat Who Barked

There is a row of trees that crowd the ground,
They’re dark and still. My cat lies in that spot.
His tiger stripes were equal all around,
But now lie wrapped in shrouds and put to rot.

Or—perhaps not. Though he once mewed, and purred,
Took longish naps, and loved a bit of cream,
He also barked. It was a thing he heard
Out on the street; we thought it was a scream.

Today, through tears, we watched as he unwound
His winding sheet, and took a breath of air,
And scampered off, tail up, until he found
A velvet divan put for trashmen there,

Then, when he saw that everything was good,
He upped and ambled to the darkened wood.

Previously publish in The Pennsylvania Review

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Spring Again

She often dreamt of Wordsworth’s daffodils,
But made do with pale violets on sills,
Longed so to float in bright green tides once more,
Swim, shiny blue, then wade that sandy shore
Imagining a vision of a lamp;
Hanging cranberry glass; with silver stamp
Frame hung so low, and all baroque, aglow
Where you could crank the brightness up until
You’d block out scruffy chickens, pigs in swill—
Some katydids, and hard clay ground to till
Beneath moon rays of saffron, amber gloss;
Later, a narrow cot, emblem of loss.

Yet still, some muddy mornings, blue jay blue
Relieved the endless dullness that she knew.

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Sally Cook is both a poet and a painter of magical realism. Her poems have also appeared in Blue Unicorn, First Things, Chronicles, The Formalist Portal, Light Quarterly, National Review, Pennsylvania Review, TRINACRIA, and other electronic and print journals. A six-time nominee for a Pushcart award, in 2007 Cook was featured poet in The Raintown Review. She has received several awards from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, and her Best American Poetry Challenge-winning poem “As the Underworld Turns” was published in Pool.  


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28 Responses

  1. Paul Buchheit

    Sally, thanks for these most interesting poems. Lots of colors and imagery in “Spring Again,” which goes well with the hints of spring outside my window.

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      When I went to investigate those annoying bumps against the back of the house one evening after my barking cat’s demise, I saw nothing and heard only the short sharp bark of my former cat saying “goodbye” or perhaps just “I’ll see you later.” Animals have their ways.

      Reply
    • Sally Cook

      TO aLLEGRA.

      Thank you Allegra. I always enjoy seeing your musical name. Is there a story behind it?

      Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Sally Cook has had several experiences that can only be called “paranormal,” or at least not subject to rational explanation. “The Cat Who Barked” describes only one of them.

    “Spring Again” could only have been written by a painter, with its incredible palette of colors.

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      Thanks, Joseph, for looking into these poems. Your comments are always in depth and insightful. We are usually on the same page but those few times we have disagreed have always resulted , for me, in a deeper understanding of whast it means to be a poet.

      Reply
  3. Roy Eugene Peterson

    “The Cat Who Barked” must have been a hoot to hear. Sorry for your loss, but such an interesting departure for the last time. The vivid imagery of “Spring Again” brought the season to life in a beautiful way.

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      All cats are interesting; some more so than others. I went to the shelter to geta nice grey and white cat, but they had none. Was handed this on “jus to hold”. Did so; he was delighted.

      We had already chosen one and were ready to leave when he looked at me.
      lOOKED ME RIGHT IN THE EYE ! !
      All thoughts of a grey and white left my mind — this tiger had fixed on me; and he was indignant. How DARE I pet him, play with him, then walk away?

      Short answer — I couldn’t. Several years later he repaid me by taking up barking as a second language.
      They are very ethical animals.

      Reply
      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        Mercy! A bilingual cat! Thank you for filling in the precious acquisition of this cat and your feelings concerning bringing it home,

      • C.B. Anderson

        Yes, Sally. Cats have a strict code of honor.

  4. Margaret Coats

    Sally, I like your careful and meaningful placement of words. In “The Cat Who Barked,” it’s the word “dark” in the second line, followed up by “darkened” in the last. These lovingly frame your final mysterious view of the cat. In “Spring Again,” it’s “blue,” first referring to the desire to swim, but brought back doubled in “blue jay blue” to relieve the dullness of no longer being able to move easily.

    I have some cranberry glass pieces, but none so big as a hanging lamp. Yours suggests how something sacred (a sanctuary lamp?) blocks out ordinary things, at least for a while. The moon’s “saffron, amber gloss” reminds me of the gold dust that gives cranberry glass its particular shade of red. The richness contrasts with the cot as an emblem of loss.

    Well-chosen colors brushed on in just the right spots for their significance!

    Reply
    • sally cook

      Memories of my mother called up all the colors in this poem.. She loved cranberry glass but it’s not cheap. I was never in a position to buy that lamp for her, but my father was, and he would not. One of the worst arguments I ever witnessed between them was about that lamp. How carefully, how lovingly swhe described the color – the ripeness of the lamp. I was a small child, and I never forgot it, so it must have been a humdinger ! Those qualities he considered frivolous or inconsequential, such as a burning desire for cranberry glass were the same ones he denigrated in me. Just as I cannot forget her darting through the waves in late spring in a shiny blue bathing suit; my mother, the Pisces; the great blue fish.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Sally, I have seen some cranberry glass that is a deep and rich red, and other cranberry glass that is light and pinkish in color.

        I feel bad that your father would not buy that lamp for your mother. It seems like such a little thing to do to make one’s wife happy.

  5. C.B. Anderson

    I’ve always felt that tortoise-shell markings were my favorite color on a cat, but I’ll settle for calico (but bearing in mind that all cats are black in the dark). I’ve heard about your barking cat before, but it’s always good to renew my acquaintance with that fluffy rover.

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      Kip, somehow I never doubted yoiur affinity for the feline variety.
      My favorite early on was the tortoiseshell, though I later, through drawing them, gained an appreeiation of the patterned ones.
      A light-fingered ex-friend once once asked to stay overnight, and left the next morning with a large envelope I had labeled “smiling cats with teeth” which I had had the bad judgment to show her the previous evening. She also stuffed a large silver spoon given to me by my second cousin Inez in her duffel bag with the cats.

      Reply
  6. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Dear Sally, I have enjoyed both of these thoroughly intriguing poems and I love the way you paint with words. I especially like ‘The Cat Who Barked’ because it reminds me of a cat I had who barked. I have come to learn that cats are mysterious creatures of unworldly powers. They tap into our thoughts and dreams… and they know everything. Your poem captures just that. I especially like, “But now lie wrapped in shrouds and put to rot. / Or—perhaps not…” That sums up the essence of the unfathomable feline perfectly. Sally, thank you!

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      Susan –Funny how we can’t stop talking about them, isn’t it? Well, perhaps not so funny, given how they seem to turn everything to focus on their furry selves.
      I knew you would enjoy that barking cat and thank you !
      So much to learn about the world.

      Reply
  7. Sally Cook

    Susan –Funny how we can’t stop talking about them, isn’t it? Well, perhaps not so funny, given how they seem to turn everything to focus on their furry selves.
    I knew you would enjoy that barking cat and thank you !
    So much to learn about the world.

    Reply
  8. Monika Cooper

    These poems, for all the brave and stubbornly unique beauty (and love of beauty) that they celebrate, ache.

    The resurrection of the animals is something I love to think about. I knew a cat that talked, a little bit. (Although she was much more eloquent in silences.) Extraordinarily intelligent, but with eyes I could never quite get to look straight into mine. Yours is such a wonderful vision of the “upping and ambling” that creation looks forward to, aching.

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      I would very much like to know everything about your talking cat; subject matter, tone of vice. Evan would give you my e-mail address.cat! i know
      I know they can and do talk. We had a neighbor – a very intelligent, perceptive woman who early on recognized unusual qualities in a kitten, and worked to encourage him to be more than just your garden variety cat.
      When she went to live with her daughter she gave this cat to me.
      Apparently he had developed quite a vocabulary, but refused to use much of it.
      But he loved milk, and would stand next to the fridge and clearly pronounce the word MILK until someone gave him some.
      He was not one for gossiping’; he knew what he wanted and how to get it.

      Reply
      • Monika Cooper

        I’ll ask Evan for your email. I think you’ll like the stories of this cat. She was for sure one that got into my dreams.

  9. Sally Cook

    Joe, the depth and resonance of the red color in cranberry glass relates to the amount of gold put into the glass object. There are other types of red glass ; I have some tumblers with a dark red lip, but that is ruby and I don’t believe these, called ruby, have any gold in them.
    As for my father, he was a very unhappy man and saw no reason to make anyone else happy, much less my mother, and certainly not me. His father was strong and a success, and considered my father a fool, which in many ways he was. He had an older brother died at 18, and my father was expecged go step into his shoes — he tried, but familial patterns were set, and he could not. All of this led to my mother not getting her lamp; to the withholding of affection from me.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Sally, that family history is very sad. But I do know one thing — just as irritants produce a pearl over time inside an oyster, all of those personal irritants made you into a superb painter and poet.

      Reply
      • Sally Cook

        Dear Joe —
        What a compliment ! Coming from you makes it even better.
        Thanks so much.

  10. James Sale

    The concluding couplet of your cat poem:

    Then, when he saw that everything was good,
    He upped and ambled to the darkened wood.

    is quite, quite wonderful. As well as being mysterious, it could almost be after the Creation, a description of the Maker heading towards Jerusalem.

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      Dear James —

      The sad demise of one small cat might not ordinarily stir the imagination, but there was something about this creature I could not ignore.
      You too have sensed it, as have others who have read the poem.
      That cat had a mission !

      Reply
  11. Geoffrey S.

    It’s always a pleasure to read a well-written sonnet. I liked the contrast between the glass lamp’s fixed colors with the colorless reality of spring in “Spring Again.” Reminds me of the frieze on Keats’s Grecian urn that took the narrator off unto those reveries.

    Reply
    • Sally Cook Website

      Dear Geoffrey,
      Thank you for your attention to this poem. I am always pleased when another close reader remarks on another facet of one of my poems.

      My intent was to show how imagination can brighten the dullest of places.
      Please stop by again.

      Reply

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