Tagglebones

Tagglebones, Tagglebones, the spectral cat
She is thin as the wind, She is quick as a bat
She eats only moths and drinks only air
she walks on the fog and howls the sky bare

Matted-coat calico, alley-thin ghost
Any cat you see could be old Tagglebones
Crooked-tail tabby, Blind blue-eyed white
Tattered scrap of kitten, still as any stone

Which cat is Tagglebones? Nobody knows
Nobody goes where Tagglebones goes
In through any wall chink, underneath the stair
Inside every heartbreak, Tagglebones is there

Slinking past a lamppost, climbing up the sky
A shadow with a shadow, Tagglebones goes by
A shiver in the neck hair, the corner of the eye,
A wind across the doorjam, Tagglebones goes by

She bears the moon's favour, the half-lit, the changer
She's what's left of dragons and princes of night
And no one has seen her (or no one's believed her)
She's rougher than fever and colder than fright
Tatterdamelion, spirit chameleon
Tagglebones slips between darkness and light

________________

Hmmm. The last stanza got away from me and broke from with the rest of the poem. And yet I like the last stanza best. I'm afraid the whole may need to simmer a while -- or maybe the whole will have to go.

For this poem I probably owe Old Possum an apology for ripping him off. I'll put it right next the one for memorizing "Prufrock" at age 16 and quoting it it a lot. In my SERIOUS POETRY voice (since abandoned). I must have to be sorry to someone about that.