The Overview

Gail White

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My greatest love, a Persian cat,

arrived when I was twenty-two.

I wouldn’t have expected that

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I’d fall in love in seconds flat

with eyes of enigmatic blue.

My greatest love, a Persian cat,

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refuted the old caveat:

Cat-love is not, like dog-love, true.

I wouldn’t have expected that

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she’d choose my lap for habitat,

but year by year her kindness grew.

My greatest love, a Persian cat,

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outlasted many a fine male rat

including, my false darling, you.

(I wouldn’t have expected that.)

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And so I find, while working at

“My Life and Loves: An Overview”,

my greatest love: a Persian cat.

I wouldn’t have expected that.

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First published in the anthology Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle (Kelsay Books, 2018)

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Gail White is a formalist poet whose totem animal is the cat, as evidenced by her chapbook of cat poetry, Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where she currently owns two cats and feeds three others.

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