Painted Cat

Painted Cat
By: Michael Lee Johnson

{ekphrastic poem}

The painted cat
on my balcony
hangs in the sun,
bleaches out
it is wooden
survival kit,
cut short-
then rots
chips
paint,
cracks
widen in joints,
no infant sparrow wings
nestled in the hole
beneath its neck-
then falls down.
No longer a swinger
in latter days, August wind.