"cat of the dying palazzo"

she looks into your eyes,
cigarette between two fingers,
other arm across, its palm
cupping the elbow. Darkening
palazzo corridor behind her:
the image was named
after winter was over,
before the year turned,
in the middle of a dream
she was having of a cat
who saw the future
and like her became a woman
staring into the lens
of a world beginning again

(after a photograph by
Maria Svyatskaya)

(14 February 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander