Sherry Chandler

Steven R. Cope

Steven R. Cope is a man of many parts. As I wrote about a year ago, in a review of Clover’s Log (Wind, 2004) that I somehow never managed to place:

Steven R. Cope is a latter day troubadour. For over thirty years, he has been singing the matter of Kentucky, sometimes in bars accompanied by a guitar, sometimes in gatherings of poets at coffee shops and bookstores. The troubadours invented Romance. It was they who defined chivalry and gave us the legends of King Arthur. Cope is just as romantic but his knight errant is a slippery mountain creature named Clover.

He’s also very busy – since 2002, he’s published a novel, two poetry collections, a book of fables, and a children’s book.

Steve has graciously consented to participate in my catblogging feature with the poem below, from Clover’s Log. (The photo is of William, a blind tabby who graced our household briefly.) Of Tabby, Steve says:

Tabby would be very pleased. She was a beautiful creature, born blind, that lived with me for 15 years–the most innocent thing I’ve ever known. (I wrote most of Sassafras and much of my poetry w/ Tabby on my lap.) As the poem suggests, I expect one day to see her again (and her to see me).

To Linda C., Safely in Orlando
—Sept. 7, 2001—

Tabby is dead.
First the gold eyes,

the one tooth,
then the ears, even,

blind. In the end
she had the hardest time

knowing which way to go,
where her round water was,

her litter was,
I was.

She finally stayed
in my chair,

waiting for my hand,
eyes wide out at nothing,

and when I returned
she was there,

no, not there, —
and not fifty miles away

beneath a rock with the others,
my old black tee-shirt

wearing her,
where I shall come for them

all together,
hair lit up like foxfire

and singing, oh—
like a prodigy.

Possibly related posts:

Clover’s Log

Cat with boy and poem

Jim Wayne Miller

Reviews

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