Solar-powered Nodding Cats.

They sit on their haunches,
Shields propped against their bellies.
A trinket trio, the large one
raises its right paw in permanent salutation.

Atop a golden-brown barrel bracketed
with ornamental scrolls,
a bedside alarm clock on its back, defeated,
Occupied indifferently, unblinkingly.

I used to think to catch the first nod
of the morning, the last of night,
The waking equivocal z-axis gesture of the day,
neither yes nor no, the last drowsy sway.

Their golden bauble bobble-heads
bounce, seesaw slightly out of time.
Solar cells soak morning sun, and oscillating
foreheads fan rays across our weary kitchen tabletop.

Dust dances in a turning wedge of light
and settles slow upon red paint-lined ears.
Heads quaver, whiskers unmoving,
unmoved, in rhyme of ending days.