Learning from Buddha

The cat likes to lick

a piece of butter

at the end of a knife

propped up by the window

so he can watch the birds

today I forgot the butter and the knife

he didn't care

he knows

some days

there are no birds.

Stunned

I don't know about dropping a full bottle of wine on the pavement in Pisa

Or both leaving our hats in the locker room in Maryland on the same day

Or talking about our neighbor in West Virginia who killed his cat

As we stand hand in hand looking

At the milk of the moon shining on the whole world

I alive—you dead—saying if this could happen, anything could.

Note:  Grace recently lost her beloved husband, the sculptor Kenneth Flynn, one of whose sculptures is the subject of a poem of remembrance by Sonja James elsewhere in this issue of Innisfree.

Grace Cavalieri's newest publication is a chapbook, Gotta Go Now (Casa Menendez, 2012).  She's the author of 16 books and chapbooks of poetry, as well as 28 produced plays, short-form and full-length. Her recent books—Millie's Tiki Villas, Sounds Like Something I Would Say and Anna Nicole: Poems—are on Kindle's free lending library.  For 35 years, Grace has produced and hosted "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, recorded at the Library of Congress and transmitted nationally via NPR and Pacifica. She is the poetry columnist for The Washington Independent Review of Books. Her play "Anna Nicole: Blonde Glory" opened in NYC in 2011. Her play "Quilting the Sun" opened in S.C. in 2011.