Old Poetry Found in a File

Danise Codekas © 2012
A friend found some of my poetry the other day and lectured me about why I had never bothered publishing it. Unlike some children, my first writings were not prose, but poetry. Long days and nights spent in childhood pursuits leached into my consciousness in rhyme, rather than nightmares.

Perhaps I never mentioned them but the first books I read, alone, when I could read alone, were not fairy tales but epic poetry, odes and mythology. The first 2 books received when I was around 8, were the Iliad and The Odyssey.

Coffee table-sized, artfully colored in rich, powerful colors, the pictures were true to Greek tragic art. Reds,blues, black, emotive, powerful, images of Scylla, the Sirens, the death of Piraeus, the bloodshed inside the walls of Troy, as the wooden horse revealed the hidden Greek warriors inside, who stormed into the midst of a jubilant, sleeping city and burned it to the ground.

My other favorite book was the Aeneid, by Virgil, consisting of 12 books, 10,000 lines of dactylic hexameter, and is the tale of Aeneas, a Trojan warrior who heads off to Italy, after the fall of Troy, and hangs out with the Romans.

You see how I, as a child, would want to write poetry for her first composition.  Reading poetry quickly satisfies my soul and quickly reveals the energy of a situation, human or soul.  So here is a poem written around Easter 2002. ‘Tis the season, non?



Ode To A Cat; Ode About My Mistress, ©2002, Danise Codekas

He sits to my right
Watching my hands and eyes
Waiting for me to look his way.
He licks up his paw and rests it
On the desk again.
Waiting for me to stop typing and
Return to my bed.
He knows the hours have been long today.
He also knows it is time to go nite nite.

A cat has an internal clock built like we do.
It is based on sunlight and moonlight
Like it used to be for me in Crete.
Just the moon to light my nights and
The Sun to follow my mind, through the day.

This animal is tired.
Now with eyes closed he listens to the keyboard
As it clicks and stops.
His ears go up at the silence and he opens one eye slowly.

Is she done?
Will we go into the other place and lie our heads
Upon the pillows?
Will she lie down quietly so I can lie next to her,
And sleep,
And dream about Cat Heaven and things so wondrous,
Because my mind is not filled with angst or anger or fears.

I am just a companion cat who lives for many years,
With this woman of kindness and beauty.
Whom I know so well.
Better than anyone else in the World.

I know her moods and the sounds of her voices.
I know her eyes and the smile that tells me
She is content, with Me.
I am a happy cat,
An old cat.
A cat that awaits My Mistress.

She stops.
She moves.
And the Brightness goes away
As we walk into the other room,
With the Softness to lie on.