Four O'Clock by Kelley White

The cats are here between me and the window
because it is a warm sunny afternoon and they will not
let me work. They bathe themselves. They bathe
each other. You’ve come in. It’s a lovely late
August day. Your legs surprise me, veins knotted,
pale, blue beneath your thinning skin. So thin.
Muscles disappearing with each day we survive.
My face is warm too. Soon I will have to pull
the curtain against the sun. And we will both lie
down. Sunlight, cats, autumn. Nothing more
needed. Unless you count us both, the way we keep
breathing, the way we can sleep with sun washing
our faces.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA. Kelley's most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Kelley's newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was recently published by Kelsay Books.