Fourteen months ago, during Sydney covid days, I was sitting on my balcony grappling with ideas for a novel. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a white cat prowling up the kerb below. On second glimpse, I realised it was an imaginary cat, a plastic bag animated by autumnal air.
I stopped grappling with my novel immediately and I began grappling with a haiku.
A month later I submitted the second version of the haiku to Zine West 2020, published by the New Writers’ Group, and a month after that it was accepted.
This is the cover of the magazine.
This is the haiku:
Shape-shifting
Autumn breeze blowing
A plastic bag prowls the kerb
White cat in disguise.
This isn’t the actual plastic bag that inspired the haiku, because the actual plastic bag was moving along the edge of the kerb and it’s long gone, but it’s close enough.
This bag has a double form in addition to being a carrying receptacle. It has the form of a heart and simultaneously the form of an animal’s face, possibly a bear’s and at a stretch a white cat’s, the handles being the ears and the point, a snout.
Here is a photo of an actual white cat to make a comparison with the plastic bag cat face. The cat is a local and seems annoyed that I stopped to photograph it.
It appears to be on the verge of rolling its eyes.
Here is another imaginary cat, also a local, a stain on a pavement, possibly bleach.
It’s looking to the left at something which isn’t there, and its tail rises to the crack between the pavements and its four legs stand delicately, frozen forever to the spot as if about to dash to an imaginary location.
This is the story of the cat I didn’t see and how a plastic bag turned into a haiku.