Princess kept me sane
through the loneliness
of early adolescence,
through my sister’s screams,
through my parents’ failures,
through my isolated years
as classmates partied
in teenage crowds.
But Princess loved me,
and I spent my summers
reading math and the mysteries
of stars and planets and
military history
with her tongue washing my ear
as her paws kneaded the pillow beneath us.
Her purr was dearer music
than the rock and roll
my schoolmates danced to
while I spent my Saturday nights
alone.
Sam Friedman has published hundreds of poems and many books, including Teamster Rank and File; Making the World Anew: Poems of the New Dialectic; and A Precious Residue: Poems that ponder efforts to spark a working class socialism in the 1970s and after.
