This book is dedicated to Marion for decades of love. I also dedicate it to my two muses who saved my life this year, my two cats, Dany and Bodie.

Well kitties, here are two poems just for you..,

Requiem For a Greek Amphora

It lay there,
shattered on the floor.
I wept in guilt,
a failed guardian,
to what was now a pile
of fractured clay and paint.

It was whole
when Alexander ruled the world,
when Buddha walked the earth,
and Leonidas fell
before the might of Xerxes
in Thermopylae's narrow path.

It was whole
for Socrates and Plato,
for Hannibal, Pompey,
Caesar, Cleopatra,
and all the Roman ghosts.

It stood un-shattered
while Christ was crucified,
and Islam first was born,
when Vikings swept the European lands
and Britain flowered in the Northern seas.

It survived while plague killed millions,
then survived another hundred wars,
atom bombs,
and earthquakes,
fires,
and tsunamis.

It survived them all,
only to be killed by an orange tabby,
chasing a moth,
ignorant of history,
Destiny's destroyer,
assassin of fate,
now lovingly purring,
guilt-free and hungry.

And finally....

Young Kitty (a nursery-rhyme)

Young Kitty was orange,
her green eyes were bright.
She slept all the day,
but she hunted at night.

Young Kitty was lonely,
her mother had left,
so her heart felt quite empty
and her soul was bereft.

She wandered the meadows
and meowed at the moon,
in the hope that a new friend
would answer her soon.

Each night she went roaming,
alone in the field
in the hopes that her heartache
and sorrow would yield.

One night while she hunted,
she heard a strange cry
from the dark emerald bushes
beneath the dark sky.

She tiptoed in silence
to that cry in the night
and stared through the bushes
at a wondrous sight.

There on the damp ground,
on her back with a grin,
lay Young Kitty's mother,
much to Kitty's chagrin.

"I've searched," she said loudly,
"for many a day,
since they took me, Young Kitty,
since they took me away."

"But now I have found you,
my sweet kitten dear,
and I'll always be with you,
I'll always be near."

Young Kitty was orange,
her green eyes were bright.
She slept all the day,
but she hunted at night.

Young Kitty was joyous,
with her mother she crooned,
as they wandered the meadows
and meowed at the moon.