A cat allowed her table scraps
Is how it has begun, this dim
Dutch I’ve heard for years
And now must learn.
Dishes fix the azimuth
Of which one caught your words,
“Something’s wrong. I watch
Myself as if I am not here”.
A dial tone replaced your voice,
The response I couldn’t find.
The clever kitty scoots away.
The waiter makes his rounds.
The harried waiter speaks in Dutch
I somehow understand.
He leaves. I try these sounds
To the lure the puddy back again.
“Dear Boots, now but the moon
Can bounce my worry up to you.
We are both cats, must live
From paw to mouth like them.”
***
It was in 1989. I was in Curaçao calling back to Edmonton. That would have been over a satellite-linked landline, which faded out in the middle of our exchange. Was it because there was a full moon, lunar flares? In any event, there was a stray cat under the tables, one known to and tolerated by the staff. Although I was in Curaçao to study the local creole, Papiamentu, I was also trying to be at least civil in Dutch, the working language of that place in that time.