Captain Jack

Captain Jack sits on the stacked CDs
as if in audience. His two front paws
are neatly folded, and you wouldn’t know,
to look at him, how life took him on board
and dropped him in the Medway, where he swam
some eighty yards to catch the tug, and not
the churn of the propellers. He is black,
with white tuxedo paws and throat, although
he does not choose to speak of this. A man
who’d like to bring the CDs back indoors
is telling us the story. Captain Jack
has seen some fifteen summers come and go,
he’s not a kitten anymore, his fur
marks out the elder statesman. Passers-by
nod in respect and recognition as
he takes his ease on records or CDs
on Preston Street, in downtown Faversham,
a short sail from the Medway, where a cat
has got no business going overboard
to swim those eighty yards back to the tug.