Red

My grandmother had cooked our dinner.

And we had all begun to eat;

My grandmother, my two sisters, my mother and I.

In the midst of that my father came home.

He had been with Patton in the War.

So he had never really come home.

But he often simulated coming home;

To our dinner table;

In northeast Portland;

From Sonny’s Bar and Grill.

I guess that was how he had survived the Patton era.

Drinking.

One night he came home from Sonny’s with a little red kitten.

Red, he said, was the kitten’s name;

And Red was what we called him;

Until he died many, many years later.

“He came up and sat on the bar stool next to me”

My father told us at the dinner table that night.

This evening as I looked at Cinq,

Our big red cat,

Sitting on the stool next to Mysti;

With his paws folded neatly;

In front of him on the bar;

I had to wonder: “Is Red here again”?

“Probably”;

I thought to myself.

And that was good.