Cat Among Stones — by James Richardson

Little more, but that paths contrive
dangerously to slide and how,
with softness of tread, it can draw their urge
through the lash-thin channel of its spine
in a counterflick of the tail, dissipating,
it knows. In a field, erratic in deliberation,
it tends along an isotherm,
or skirts, exactly, the lake of an odor,
as if openness itself were tortuous,
desire impassable. If it stepped across your back
you would deepen, limbless as a pond,
and go dark, all your thought
a match flame at the end of the hall,
wavering, stretched, righting itself.