Window Cats

Presences behind glass:
their otherness glitters,
draws me up the path to gaze
at their indecipherable dream.
One curves, pure black, along
the saddle of the rocking horse;
the second, a porcelain shape,
tabbily perfect under
the chipped grey nostrils:
both poised, in possession,
and every hair a master-stroke.
Behind slits in topaz
each is an intimate absence
staring me back down the path,
the tabby leaping
into the window frame
to watch me away, then
vanishing back into that
stillness, that composed power,
on which they ride and they fly
to old Assyria.