Aleppo Cat
TYPE
PoemYEAR GROUP
Years 5 and 6First, months
of flash, thud, shudder,
then the wailing...
Months,
that's half a young cat's life
and three or four more of her nine
already used up.
Hush,
ears perked, head cocked,
she's listening
to the sound
that's no sound, no voice, not
a throb of engines, not one
sound of human.
Now
she slinks, always liquid enough
to shrink through cracks,
now starved to whisker-thinness
- pauses,
wide eyes
between tumbled blocks,
the first living thing out
among the heaps of mudbrick
dust, of a...
who could say
street? She checks the cat-map
in her mind. The market...
Where the bread smells came from...
Gone.
And where the fish man
tossed the bones.
Gone.
Where the children chased her
with fierce cuddles, too young
to know their strength.
Gone,
and their voices,
out late playing,
their mothers calling them home.
Home, gone. Aleppo,
gone, gone, gone.
CLiPPA TEACHING SEQUENCES
Dark Sky Park CLiPPA Teaching Sequence.pdf