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2409 Jefferson Street
Port Townsend, WA
360-379-1086

Pat Austin

CATS IN THE WINDOW by Pat Austin

Rain all night. Now near noon
fine mists fill spaces between bullets of rain.
Muted reds, yellows, greens ,burgundies
color the velvet trees and carpet the street
with a smokier tweed of leaves.

Wheels of my car hiss on wet flakes.
What is not soft crackles a licorice black,
slick and wet. Dazzles of light as if from
shattered mirror glass scatter edges
of metallic things in dizzying confusion.

In innumerable windows
dry cats silhouette themselves
against dark interiors of unlit rooms,
their clean fur glowing warm colors--
orange and milk, honey, the gray of pearl---
sitting, some with eyes half closed, some wide,
taking in my car, the rain, the odd passerby.
All across the city, cats watch as if with one mind
Inscrutable but alert.

###


THE MAN SLEEPS by Pat Austin

The man sleeps.

His woman watches over him.

He sleeps on his side, motionless.

The bench on which the man sleeps

and the woman sits

is concrete.

She has arranged their clothes

in a tidy triangle

upon a blanket.

The blanket rests against a low wall

at the edge of the city park.

The wall is made of concrete.

She is large and solid as if poured into place and hardened.

She guards his head

with her ample hip.

Her face faces the blanket on the sidewalk, against the wall,

maybe guarding also

the small food cartons at the blanket’s edge.

Her dress, sweater, hair, his pants, jacket, skin

are all aggregates of gray

except for the visor cap covering his face.

The cap is bright green.

###

OJCZYN: A POLISH STEPFATHER by Pat Austin


Third time you tell that story on this day
among repeats of other village tales
you are more there than when you were---
You, heaving hundred kilo sacks of flour
like feather pillows onto wagon beds.

You are sixteen and strong as men of thirty two,
toss sacks until the iron axles creak,
and still you’ll sing the dirt road into town
and dance girls into exhaustion by the dawn---
perfumed by sweat and horseshit, as you say,

with miller’s daughter pleading for your love
and farmer’s sons begging you for mercy. Then
the horse, white, “Beautiful” her name,
submits, no whip, to your light whistle-click
and hoists wood wheels from ruts of hard pack mud.

I hear this and my heart goes chalk and dry
to see how ninety years have punished you.
But I’ve lost interest in the best revenge.
My mother is why I’m here,
and I listen out of courtesy to her.

Your feet stomp carpet to demand some feel.
Your mind floats like your kneecap, there and not,
of dubious value in this place, this time.
Old Slav, you’d still be dangerous, I think,
if rage unhitched you from your Lay-Z-Boy.