Hindsight

for Alex Murphy 1988-2024

Were they your cats?
I doubt that they thought so.
Cat’s have a way of keeping us guessing about the things we think are important.

Devil’s advocates,
wallowing luxuriously in our unguarded love.

You are really gone now, though.
That much is sure.
And I’m unable to ask you if you were hoping to get the last laugh on them.

I can pass my hand right though the space you occupied in my kitchen.
admiring my soup with un-self-conscious joy.
“This is delicious”, you observed between mouthfuls.

If not for the vexing habits of time, my hand would be stopped.
Only now, I would know the questions that I should ask.

But you might still not answer.
The old free will prerogative.
So I must accept that there was never any guarantee that I could ever know.

Always a little doubt, that no furious scrubbing can get out of that corner.

It makes me wonder If this world isn’t a bit of a trick
thought up by cats.