They gather after midnight<\/p>\n
just beyond the fence line<\/p>\n
my tongue clicking as loud as can be<\/p>\n
is the signal<\/p>\n
They try to be patient<\/p>\n
but are hungry and they squabble<\/p>\n
momentarily as I divvy dry food<\/p>\n
and canned onto paper dish and<\/p>\n
heart-shaped leaves picked for the occasion<\/p>\n
I spread what banquet there is before them<\/p>\n
In the dark I hear the crunching noises<\/p>\n
the small grunts of satisfaction<\/p>\n
the quiet scraping of paper plate against pavement<\/p>\n
I do what I can for my friends<\/p>\n
I lean my bare arms against the gate<\/p>\n
white painted metal cool to skin<\/p>\n
surrender some of my weight to it<\/p>\n
and take in the dark sky<\/p>\n
This is all I need<\/p>\n
this ritual this mystery<\/p>\n
this communion<\/p>\n
To someone we are unwanted<\/p>\n
unimportant<\/p>\n
we are cats<\/p>\n
refugees all<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They gather after midnight just beyond the fence line my tongue clicking as loud as can be is the signal They try to be patient but are hungry and they squabble momentarily as I divvy dry food and canned onto paper dish and heart-shaped leaves…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":255,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65878,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65211\/revisions\/65878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}