by Hilary Sallick
This morning a silver cat
appeared outside my window
its second visit in two days
It stepped from the roof
of my neighbor’s shed
to the trunk of the mulberry
where it clung
against gravity rapt
by the nearness of a squirrel
downward-hanging easy
in its tree
The cat
held on and met those eyes
with its own
Then the squirrel turned lightly
away — only to change
its mind mid-action
to circle back inching closer
And slowly leisurely
the cat climbed down glided through
a hole in the fence
Hilary Sallick is the author of Love is a Shore (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023), long-listed for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award; and Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Pensive; SoFloPoJO; iamb; Action, Spectacle; Halfway Down the Stairs; Permafrost; Potomac Review; Notre Dame Review; and elsewhere. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives in Somerville, MA. (www.hilarysallick.com)
January House Literary Journal 
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