A poem inspired by the cover of Kafka on the Shore -- Day 1 of #NaPoWriMo23

Dear Readers,

Hello. Hope you've been well. 

It's Day 1 of #napowrimo23. It has dawned wet and grey where I am.

Poets, Start Your Engines prods the prompt and challenges the poet to "write a poem based on a book cover."

Engine started. Challenge (almost) accepted. 

I wrote this poem inspired by 'Kafka on the Shore' last year. Why not enter it to start the challenge and then take every day as it comes, I tell myself as I punch the laptop keys and hope that another 'new' poem will find its way to me while I go about my day. 

Thank you for being here and for reading my poetry.

You know I'd love to read your comments.

Wishing you all a fabulously creative April.

Arti

“Kafka on the Shore”

This cat, all-white, thumbnail size

stares at me from a semicircle of white:

A thick arch drawn to the right of the spine.

A moon must’ve spilt in half or gone to hide

Behind.

 

But this cat, all-white, thumbnail size

sits quite still

under a rectangle, built with walls

that are white:

cradling in its solid arms, all-white

Dark and Light

hints of Blue and a dollop of Navy.

 

The cat’s tail, a twisted white noodle, fallen off mid-bite from a fork

questions me with its shape.

The all-white tail of the all-white cat

asks: “when will you look up?”

Or perhaps it’s the cat, white and thumbnail size,

that’s prodding me to put the phone down and pick up

the book it’s etched on instead,

and read that which is claimed

by the New Yorker to be

“An insistently

 metaphysical mind-bender”.

 

If you take your gaze away from the cat, all-white and thumbnail size

and let it hover

just above the thickly drawn white rectangle on the cover,

you’ll discover that while Haruki Murakami lies imprisoned

in the rectangle’s strong and solid arms,

Kafka on The Shore

roams free

on Dark and Light hints of Blue and  a dollop of Navy.