The Way Cats Do Poetry

I eat poems in the dark
small quick bites
to crunch the bones

of nouns and verbs,
the rare sinew of adjective,
bleeding punctuation,

the marrow of line breaks,
as the poem struggles
against my teeth.

Too dense to smell
it must be tongued out
savoring each layer.

When I am full – gorged on context,
the poem settles in my stomach
and I wander to a patch of sun

to sleep and dream in meter.