I’ve been thinking lately about tsunamis,
dreaming about them.  We’re at the beach,
working on our skin cancer, when the horizon
starts trembling.  I wake up, wondering
why I can’t visualize the approaching wave,
its height or velocity, its changing colors.
I don’t mean stock images from disaster movies,
the safe magic of CGI.  A cruise ship
swanning past, big as a city block, imagine
a wave tossing her like a piece of driftwood?
I can’t.  Someone once told me what
you can’t imagine can’t happen--
the shadow of the approaching wave
rising against the buildings like night filling
up the window when you raise the shade.
                        

My mat smells
like cat chow.  

As that old song 
“Somebody’s Watching You”

doesn’t say, nobody’s
watching you.

Nobody’s watching me
except both cats

napping on their chair
as I return to my breath,

preparing for corpse pose.
My teacher likes 

“hospice” as a metaphor
for life.  Why maim 

each other?  We’re all 
patients here.
                        

I wake up,
eye-to-eye with the cat’s anus.
He’s purring on my chest.
Why me, oh, Lord?
Like facetime
with a rusty washer.
I hear good things
about the ungulates,
their table manners, their
clean plates.  My kind
of animal, sweet-smelling,
modest, not like cats
weaving between your legs,
scent glands under their tails,
rubbing until you smell
like them, safe enough
to love.  Take my species,
for example.  I’m a person,
p-e-r-s-o-n.  Before
the plague of white-eyes,
each nation called itself
“the people.”  Take.
my species  Please.