Christmas Kitten (poem)

So a prompt for the holidays, an Etheree poem (no, I had no clue either) focusing on Christmas trees and themes of such. The full explanation of an Etheree poem and examples and the rest is in the link to the prompt from dVerse Poets here, An Etheree Tree, but it is …

… write in the form of this Etheree which is 10 non-rhyming lines graduating, per line, from 1 syllable in line 1 to 10 in line 10. The only addition to the form was two extra lines of only 2 syllables each at the end.

Now, not the original intent of the Etheree of course, but if you then center the 10 lines on the page and add the two extra lines for the tree trunk bottom you get the shape of a Christmas tree, which, well, just looks cool

It made me think of a favorite couple of pictures from so many years ago of Cal, the kitten, 2004 or so, in a house I shared with my sister and brother then.

Cal, one of the 5 kittens that were kittened to us by a pregnant cat (my brother named her Mia) who just showed up at our back door one day looking for a place to possibly stay. She had surely seen my Benny in his Benny to and fro’s around neighbor’s yards and flower beds and through his cat door and thought to herself in a wanting way, “these are good cat folk and this is just the place to lay my head” and proud, expectant belly in a toweled cardboard box world with lots of human hovering and eventual kitten squirming. She was also the Mom of my beloved “Shoes”, the Big Orange, who I would eventually write of quite a lot over his 11 too short years.

Well, this was from the first Christmas with Cal and Shoes (after we found homes for the others) and I thought they would be the perfect pictures for this.

Christmas Kitten

I

kitten

can’t see me

I hide in glow

of lights and baubles

pictures cute found subject

broken heirloom sighs know blame

but can’t hold true meaning account

Christmas purr instinct as a cat will

until climb down to plush skirt and cat nap

warm blinks

cat dreams

Oh … and since I mentioned it, this is one of that cardboard box that came with all the human hovering.