A Cat Walks on the Tin Roof at Two in the Afternoon

— Mum, someone is walking on the roof.

— That's Mr. Tư's cat.

— How do you know?

— Because only he walks that lightly.

Two in the afternoon, the hour when lunch has settled, the laptop screen has gone pale in the glare, and my head is hanging somewhere between two jobs. I am sitting at my daughter's desk because mine is stacked with file boxes. The glass of iced tea by my hand has lost all its ice. Outside, the cicadas keep their steady drone.

Then comes the sound. Tak… tak… tak. Very light, very even, one beat at a time like someone tapping a finger on an old drum. I stop typing. I look up at the ceiling and listen to it travel from one end of the roof to the other, pause, and turn around.

I cannot remember the last time I heard a cat on a tin roof. Years, probably. Not because it never happens. Just that I never once stopped typing.

I wrote the poem below right then, in the corner of a scrap of paper still stuck with tape. It is not a poem about a cat, or about a roof. It is about that short pause, maybe forty seconds, until I heard the glass of iced tea touch the desk and pull me back to a deadline at three.

The poem

Two in the afternoon.
The sun presses on the tin roof
like a sigh
long overdue.

Up there
something walks.
Tak.
Tak.
Tak.

Not rain.
Not wind.
I know
because it stops
and walks again.

The glass of iced tea
has lost all its ice,
leaving a ring of water
on my daughter's desk.

I do not type.
My fingers hang
over the keys
like a bird
that has not decided.

Maybe it has crossed
other roofs
when I was not listening.
Today I am listening.

Tak.
Tak.

Then quiet.

I wait a little
longer,
in case it comes back.

The prose should explain one thing the poem should not: I was not sitting there moved. I was sitting there because there was no reason not to. I noticed that when a small sound cuts in while I am between two jobs, I have two ways to hear it. The first is as an interruption: someone on the roof, too loud, back to work. The second is as a sound. Only a sound. Both ways are me, and I can choose. That day I chose the second, and managed it for forty seconds.

If you want a close relative of this, listening to the sound of falling rain is about the same act of hearing without pushing back, only with a different sound.

Four lines for you to write

A poem does not have to be good. It only has to be true. Nobody reads it but you, unless you want them to. It also follows the same grain as five senses, five minutes, except it picks exactly the ear and exactly four lines.

You will know you wrote it right when every line holds something you could see or hear and no line explains anything. The first time, most people find they want to add one "meaningful" closing line, and that line usually sounds stock. Leave it at four and drop the closing line. After about a week of writing, some people find themselves hearing other small sounds in the day, and others notice no difference and simply like having four lines at night. Both are fine.

On a day so busy there is no breath left for writing, just recall one sound and name it in your head. No paper needed.

The easiest place to go wrong is demanding that the poem "come out as a poem". I once had a draft where I added three lines about "the peace of a summer afternoon", and reading it back felt like an advertisement. It is tempting because people are used to poetry being moving. But my summer afternoon was a glass of iced tea with no ice and one finger hovering over a keyboard. Keep exactly that.

If the writing will not come

Two reasons come up most.

One: you cannot recall any sound at all, the whole day was keyboards and the air conditioner. That is fine. Tomorrow try it backward: choose a moment in advance, say while the kettle heats, and sit waiting for a sound to arrive.

Two: you wrote it and found it bad and want to delete it. Do not delete. Bad is bad. These four lines are not meant for publishing.

I sat a little longer. The cat did not come back. There was the slap of my daughter's sandals on the stairs, and the door opened.

— What are you doing at my desk, Mum?

— Listening to the cat.

— Could you hear it?

— I did. It's gone now.

I typed one word again. Then another. The glass of iced tea still had a ring of water on the desk.