Cats Eye

Words and music copyright ©1978 by Howard Ashby Kranz

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1. By the creek, in the sand, to older eyes unshown,

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Maggie Green, ten years old, finds a shiny stone..

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And it looks like a cat’s eye, so she takes it home,

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And she keeps in her secret chest, with Grandma’s comb,

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and later she holds the cat’s eye to her own, and she begins to scan,

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and I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Angry colors, glowing around everything,

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like hands that grasp at me in the air, and they can’t quite reach me, but they’re always there.

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2. Pretty girl, Margaret: her pride will be her fall.

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The fine young men she turns away, soon she’ll have none at all,

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and while plainer girls have families, she’ll be too old soon;

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she’s got an old maid’s oddness and an old maid’s gloom

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since a younger man she seemed to like ran from the room, his face hidden in his hands,

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saying “I can’t believe what I hear, and I can’t stop hearing it since she touched my ear,

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the howling voices, the mouths that gape, and their strength is rising and there’s no escape!”

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3. Crazy old old Ms Green lives on down the block,

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and the kids won’t step on her sidewalk squares, and they tell how, in the dark,

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her eyes like a cat’s eyes seem to glow,

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and Mother says, “Don’t torment the woman so,”

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and Father says it only goes to show that a woman needs a man,

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and you can’t believe what you hear, and the crazy lady says we need not fear:

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she says the outer forces are turned back for a time; we must turn the fight inward, and she lowers her eyes.