As I parked my car one morning, light

just breaking over the horizon,

I saw a black cat step daintily out of a sewer drain.

 

What the creature was doing

there is a mystery, and one might make

some assumptions, but she was sleek,

well-groomed, muscular, eyes

alert and purposeful,

head held high and tail aloft with

careless royalty

only a cat can muster.

 

Though only I would ever guess

where she had spent her nocturnal hours, now

in the morning her black fur was blazing, like anti-fire

burning darkness through the long light,

a brilliant shadow in the thin sunshine. Like

a protagonist emerging from the haze of unseen

and forgotten places with

the halo of a long arc and now

resolution.