Where the Wild Things Are

Last night a long time friend and poet asked me to write something for her. She had witnessed a life and death incident down a side road that she told me left her heart bleeding. She said she could talk about it but that her hand couldn't record it, not adequately. She asked if I might listen and gift it back to her.

It had to do with a cat, well, two cats actually and the way she had seen and been seen. I will chew on the details and bear witness in short time, but this morning I think that there is a simple, ageless tale in the telling of the dark feral traits coupled with the dumb-founded forgiveness that comes over us when we least anticipate angelic visitation.

I don't have the words for her, for any of us yet, though I believe they attempted to visit me in dream last night - fearless wild cat pouncing and exciting the response to maim, teeth going in deep and infectious bookended by the arrival of a companion who covered me with slow, methodical, and unconditional empathy.

My friend and I talked about the disappearance of the stalker that springs ferociously from anger and of how we learn again to float. How an unseen stranger might leave water out for the wild things to quietly drink. I think the tiny death of this "scrunched face" feline and the arrival of the second rust tabby in mourning must surely embody the mood swings we all shelter and unfurl - the lashing out and the settling down. Let me see now what justice I can do. To reveal the fury and her siamese twin, compassion.

Two little critters with no home. They meet in the alley. A woman on two legs is present.

Comments

Shameless Early Promotion

My poetry book, The Fiction of Stillness, is available for pre-order now on Barnes and Noble. Official release date August 1st, 2024. Here's a taste: ... The table is smooth and round symmetric The chairs are haphazardly placed at the end of this day I have breast cancer I say into the receiver [communities must] pool resources How to produce the sounds of the imaging report into sentences that resonate with months of postponement weighty contrast on my right side computing and comparing IM ratios for greater insight not sufficient to prove the efficacy of screening ...

Vessel

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter cookies nested in paper that releases a sigh But instead there may be fiction within wishes never reciprocated Playbill of redundant arguments One black glove found fraying This vessel on an emptied table solo temptation is labeled with another’s name Guarded initials as if carved in melting snow A tool unsuited to the task of prying open Not yet valentine

Open Mic, Cafe Babar

I remember arriving, not the prettiest but appealing to certain bards in the back room, entering through the Castro Valley corner door, walking the postage stamp sized Cinzano bar curated by a man from Detroit who named his establishment after a certain French elephant in a children’s book I arrive with budding consciousness around politically correct solidarity for disheveled neighbors, entering the cigarette lit night rising to tin siding ceiling to floor thumping insistence Bruce and Joie and David and Laura and John, their ash and sweat accumulating as I waited patiently for my place on the crumpled sign-up sheet Today, three decades later, I sit in a Santa Fe gallery named simply Here, and a poet reads to us of roadrunners and a bear and a continuation of the call for preservation of our environment There is an otherworldly hum outside the window of leaded glass The owner sidles up behind me and pushes the fr...

As Mourning Doves Persist

Search This Blog