Hymn to Her

Credit: Patricia Ann McNair

Around the parlor, her five cats
sit calm as Buddhas.  Here she

dwells, at home only at home.
Outside the tedious crumble

of brick walls, she becomes
other.  Outside her windows,

spring is becoming its scruffy
self again: I see the flicker

worrying the spruce bark
for its beetle and the black hole

at the center of the galaxy
in the same light—even though

I am not there to catch either—
as I see her, her cats, and her

universe with a sense
of the solitude of each sight.

~ Ron Houchin