In Sepia

From an old photo

A little girl, in sepia,
a huge Shirley Temple bow
crowning her head;
something of a pun,
she sits, legs crossed,
on a damask ottoman,
the genetic duplicate
of her mother;
near her, the cat
with a collar bell
holding his head steady
to minimize the noise.
The pose and the frown,
just a warm-up
to cultivate new tissue
for an immune existence;
she, an intangible archetype
in a tangible universe,
seeking to survive
inside one mysterious epic.

Her distorted reflection
will wrap spiral waveforms
around the fairy-tales
of the illusory world,
with the desire of a feline
hunting to satisfy hunger;
a human heart on the Holy Grail
in perennial aspirations,
her words will surge and ebb
not knowing, at the end,
she is designed to woo
her painful joints.