TRINITARIAN EYES

It’s Cat the Father,
Cat the Son,
and Cat the Holy Ghost.
With their Trinitarian eyes ―
all six of them, all slick with Brylcreem,
all signals and signs ―
they stare, they scare, they swear:
“If you dare! If you dare!”

The world’s under their spell ―
Doxology, Mariology, Eschatology:
for godliness, for obedience,
for patriotic soliloquy.
Pawing the floor, pawing the wall,
tri―umphant, feline signature,
introducing catwalk in all manners,
for catching heretics and outliers.
But the catch is in the details,
even though they say they don’t do traps.
For isn't it Cat the Father,
Cat the Son, and Cat the Holy Ghost?
(But where’s Cat the Mother?)

History always comes to rescue;
history is, to all cats, always kind.
There was a Cat the Father who famously said,
“It doesn’t matter if the cat is white
or black; any cat that catches mice
is a good cat!” So there ― no catty remark!
And yet being human
is that rare thing that cats are jealous of:

TRINITARIAN EYES

cat-eyes sick with envy,
revanche on Trinitarian overdrive.
Where mirror and photo and mimeograph
make perfect avatars, Catwoman the Mother
has no bother giving Cat the Father
his only begotten ― oh well ― autograph.

You aren’t a mouse, nor a cat ―
but surely you’ll remember the words
from an old Cat Stevens song:
“All the times that I’ve cried,
keeping all the things I knew inside...”
Yes, “Father and Son”, his 1970 performance.
If you try and cry and sanctify, if you
follow your quarrels into your sorrow
inside your tomorrows outside your pride
you’ll find the things inside are
but things from eventide, where Trinity
is the name of a woman, and cats
are mere figments in the mind.
And so where Trinity resides,
Father and Son will soon give way to
Mother and Child; and,
eschatologically, the Holy Ghost
will happily retire.