Poem by Joan Dobbie

I found a kitten once

It was lying in a field
of ribs and twisted spine

I called the vet
and said I found a starving cat
what can I do?

Feed it, she said
I knew she was wrong.

The body changes
without food
and what once was food

becomes deadly
when death has got his grip
so tight

that hunger is no longer known

I knew
it would take something more

some special kind of food

to draw that fragile body once again
into the land of life

Something sweet & thin
like mother’s milk

which I had, in fact, back then
to feed my son
​
& so we shared

Joan Dobbie co-hosts the River Road Reading Series (RRRS)
<riverroadreadings.blogspot.com> presently on Zoom. She teaches Hatha Yoga at the
University of Oregon, and loves to share her poetry, which often seems confessional, and
sometimes is.

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