Category Archives: Animals

Only Quiet Ghosts Today (4)

Posted on by
5

nasturtiums, bougainvillea and sunflower greenery in my garden

Guess where I am? It is Sunday, and I am sitting in my courtyard drinking my morning tea for the first time in five months. I am so grateful I was able to trust myself, to be gentle, to not push myself back out here before I was ready. I have been afraid of this day, of being here without my cats. I was afraid I would feel too small, unmoored, alone. I was afraid their ghosts would be too glaring, to have them not lying nearby on their pillows, or Sable underneath the honeysuckle, Sofia stretched out on the cement beside the gate, rolling on her back in cat abandon. I was afraid it would hurt too much to even reach for my own pleasure here in my garden. And I think if I had tried it any day before today it might have been true. But I have spent hours and hours moving everything into summer places, putting in an odd and goofy watering system. There are pots of dirt beside the sliding glass door waiting for carrot and beet seeds. I pulled out one “field” of sunflowers, their gorgeous disks drying now in a yellow bucket. I moved both umbrellas, bought new chairs and put them on the other side of the table. I rigged new spots for some of the bird feeders. I have touched every part of the courtyard in the last three days, and it changed me in the process. Not only that, but now there is almost nothing that’s the same except the birds are here, and the mountains, and me. My furred ones are not, and never will be again, but it’s a deep and quiet ache, not a wrenching agony. And it’s laced with wonder at the newness of everything around me, eased by the comfort of the mourning dove cooing from the fence and the soft pecking sounds of everyone eating breakfast. I count fourteen house finch again and again while I sip my tea and marvel.

Oh, Look (1)

Posted on by
4

If we are paying attention, we know we cause trouble for ourselves, spending so much time in the future or the past, planning (scheming?), regretting, having arguments with other people in our heads. I am sitting in bed sipping my morning lemon drink when I hear the rustling of a plastic bag outside my window. I consider getting up to see who is out there, but then I decide hearing a plastic bag can only be good. It means someone is picking up after their dog. I think about how upset people get about the dog poop, how they decide no one picks up after their dogs, how clearly wrong that thinking is. If that were true in our neighborhood we’d be awash, piles of poop everywhere, no open ground. I grimace because as usual it is the one rotten apple messing things up for everyone, making me think of the recent poop appearing along our road and my grumbling suspicion of the people who let their dogs run loose. I remember one of them, a little yipping thing, chasing me on my bike the other day. Before I know it, I am having a long imaginary conversation with the creepy owner. I even bring my aunt from Palm Desert into it, how she is deathly afraid of dogs, how we can’t even walk down the street. (We wouldn’t anyway, but I thought this was good “ammunition” for my argument.) Then I am back in my home, the warm, round cup in my hands, the scent of lemons and garlic. I can see the tops of the sunflowers and the bougainvillea blossoms in the courtyard. The house finch are chirping, quiet breakfast chatter. I hear the high-pitched twittery sound of mourning dove wings, and someone else who I don’t recognize is cheeping from the top of the power pole on the other side of the trailer. My body is tense from my imaginary worked up anger, my manufactured argument. I am annoyed with myself for adding to my own stress in such a ridiculous way. I know I do it all the time, but today I have no sense of humor about it. Today it just pisses me off. And that makes me sad. How do I cultivate a lighter touch? Where is that kinder, “Oh, oops” when I need it? How do I come to celebrate instead with a glad heart each time I return? Where is that gentler voice? I’m glad you’re back, Riba. And, look. There is a white-crowned sparrow sitting on the fence.

My Mockingbird Grows Up (57)

Posted on by
Reply

I know now where my mockingbird sings. Last year they cut down this old behemoth of a tree that used to block the last hour of the sun for me in high summer. They left the trunk with all it’s sawed-off limbs, still tree-high, taller than the trailers. Right now my mockingbird is perched upon it singing to us all. Now and then he sallies forth, small leaps into the air, glorious in his dark grey and white display. Then he settles back down again upon the brown trunk. His song has smoothed out over the past weeks. He sounds like a pro now, all fluidity and grace. The only reason I know he is mine is from the way the sound comes to me. I have imagined him in the night, wondering where he was. I knew he wasn’t in my neighbor’s tree. But I thought he sounded too close to be in one of the palm trees. It wasn’t until the other day I realized where he was. His sally caught my eye from my own perch in bed. It was too tempting. I had to go get my binoculars to watch him up close. The screen on the kitchen window made him a little blurry, but I sat there grinning at myself: birdwatching from bed.

On My Behalf (45)

Posted on by
2

One-day retreat at the meditation center. First two surprises: a silent retreat and “custody of the eyes.” I keep my eyes down except for three accidental glances, feel like a mouse scurrying by in the long grass. It amuses me. In the parking lot, looking at the southern mountains and eating my soup, it comes to me that I could break into wild winged dancing and waving of clothing, unseen (like the mouse). Our teacher breaks the silence now and then. She is calm, open, funny. Once she speaks of our soft animal bodies, and I think of the poem. She is like that to me, a soft animal, a big, peaceful bird, maybe, a brown pelican, part big cat, too, sleeping in the sun. While we sit I feel again the hard weight in my chest. I am reading Andre Norton now, and I think of quan iron, blue-green, touched by magic. A blade of quan iron inside my ribcage. I am fascinated by it, cultivating curiosity. I want to know it, sidestep the urge to be rid of it. I am certain it has worked long and hard on my behalf. I want to honor it. The fourth time we sit I feel so strong it surprises me, and when I check on the quan iron it’s as though my chest is in a different place than it was in the morning. When I come home I can tell there is much more room inside me. The next day, it is gone, but I remember how I felt larger. And I remember how strong I felt in that one sitting, like I was a big oak, or that tree whose name I don’t yet know with the gnarled bark who makes those big blossoms in the fall that litter the ground like starfish.

Rest Easy (41)

Posted on by
Reply

messy kitchen counter and small altar

Yesterday was midwinter’s day. It’s a day in our year that holds magic. I remembered in the early morning hours, and then I forgot again until I was writing on the bus in Desert Hot Springs. The day was almost over, the clouds tinged pink, our longest night of the year about to begin. The fist time I remembered, I woke up in the dark and realized I had no one to tell. It was something I did, waking up sometime after midnight, the official beginning of a holiday or one of our birthdays, greeting the cats, maybe kissing them on the head before I rolled over and went back to sleep for the real dawning of the day. “Happy winter solstice, you guys,” I whispered to the dark. “I love you both so much.” And then a moment later, “So much.” When I woke up again I’d forgotten. But I did spend the day at the hot springs, feeling like I was in heaven, so maybe I soaked up some of that magic, felt that thinning of the veil between the worlds. I didn’t make an altar. But maybe that has more to do with not spending time in the courtyard. I realized yesterday evening I haven’t sat out there since Sable died. It will be something to take back with the ending of the year, I think, or the beginning of the new one. Annie called me from the vet in the afternoon to tell me Sable’s ashes were ready. I thought I’d leave them until I returned, but I decided to go pick them up last night. When I pictured leaving for Christmas, I knew I’d feel better if both sets of ashes were together at home. I know it doesn’t matter to them. But the thought of walking out the door knowing their two little wooden boxes will be sitting beside each other on the tiny kitchen altar makes something rest easier inside me, a more peaceful turning of our world.

Goodbye (Again) (39)

Posted on by
4

Coming home tonight in the new dark takes me by surprise. I start crying as soon as I unlock the door. No one is here. It hits hard. It strikes like physical pain, has me bending partway over in the doorway. I am so foggy I left this afternoon without my wallet, only the dollar for bus fare I had in my pocket this morning when I decided to walk home from the vet, the carrier light in my hand. Sable alive and purring, tangible moments in the little room. After, I carried his small limp form to the back, laid him down on the table, tucked his ratty catnip mouse near his chin. Way too many layers to touch on much of it now, eyes drooping from our near sleepless night together. Harder, though, than any of the others, I think. There was so much life in him still, my vigorous little boy cat, my big love. Later I will try to do you justice. Tonight, when I settle in without you, I will see what comes. I have been pulled away by work, by people, much of the day. I am looking forward to returning to you tonight while you are still fresh in me. I know how quickly you can fade. When I lie here in the dark I will hold to me sweet memory, the small weight of your tiny form pressed against me in the night, the way you purred almost until the end. My brave little one, I am so proud of you. My dear Boo, sweet dreams.

Holding Hope (38)

Posted on by
Reply

My black cat lying on the bed

Yesterday I made a wish on Venus, the morning star caught in the early half light through the louvered windows above my bed. Coming home last night I saw the southern cross hanging in the dark sky, and I stopped in the middle of the road near our home. I stood there for a long time talking to the heavens, beseeching the cat gods. Both times I was stunned by how big hope is, how core to humankind. And so, again and again I banish my fear and turn away from the draw of agonized remorse. I open to hope. I want to grab hold wth both fists, hang on for dear life, but I know it doesn’t work that way. We have to open to hope even when it hurts. We hold our arms out wide while feathers brush across our open palms. My little one is poised between the worlds, so I open to hope, to true dreams of having him home again, playing with his ratty catnip toy I have waiting on the pillow, racing across the courtyard in mad cat abandon, happy and well. When I visit I send him mental pictures of just that, and of sleeping curled together on our bed. I open to hope, and beside the deep sweetness and the ache of it sits the knowing I may lose him, the knowing I may need to let him go. So, I hold them both and pray. And as I write, it feels important to send this out into the world, my prayer made manifest, like a kite breaking free of its tether, or a bright red balloon drifting across the sky, whispering to the gods. I whisper, too. “I love you, Boo.” And, “Please stay.”