October 5
Walking by my other river today, Toms River it's called and I can see it from my dining room window.
Today is sparkling, cool. As I cross the street I see again, at the foot of the tree, the small memorial created by his friends for a motorcyclist killed her as he took the curve that follows the curve of the river too fast and and smashed into the tree. A growing collection of plastic flowers, poems in plastic sleeves, photos and foil balloons. We must leave our mark, or others leave it for us.
I remember when my cat first came to me out of the woods, where she begged food from campers to feed herself to feed her kittens, she’d look at me out of round eyes, as if to ask me can it be?
This daily bowl set down.
For me?
Then she would come into my bed at night after I'd gone to sleep and wet me. Warm I’d feel it, then, the feral reek. I‘d cry out and slap, until I sensed that it was love she offered, and gratitude. Possessing me.
If she were possibly—behind the face that all cats have—extraordinary, gifted, she would have written poems on my body:
lieder, pop songs:
“Sea of Love…”
But gifted or no, all she could offer was her warm urine.
That is past. She eats now out of little golden cans, and stares unblinking on her good fortune, expressed lately by sudden leaps up to the mantle and little fantasies of chase up stairs and over couches
Why is it that we need to leave our mark? Painted in caves, spray painted on derelict walls and overpasses…what?
Our pain, our love,
excreted, scrawled.
Walking by my other river today, Toms River it's called and I can see it from my dining room window.
Today is sparkling, cool. As I cross the street I see again, at the foot of the tree, the small memorial created by his friends for a motorcyclist killed her as he took the curve that follows the curve of the river too fast and and smashed into the tree. A growing collection of plastic flowers, poems in plastic sleeves, photos and foil balloons. We must leave our mark, or others leave it for us.
I remember when my cat first came to me out of the woods, where she begged food from campers to feed herself to feed her kittens, she’d look at me out of round eyes, as if to ask me can it be?
This daily bowl set down.
For me?
Then she would come into my bed at night after I'd gone to sleep and wet me. Warm I’d feel it, then, the feral reek. I‘d cry out and slap, until I sensed that it was love she offered, and gratitude. Possessing me.
If she were possibly—behind the face that all cats have—extraordinary, gifted, she would have written poems on my body:
lieder, pop songs:
“Sea of Love…”
But gifted or no, all she could offer was her warm urine.
That is past. She eats now out of little golden cans, and stares unblinking on her good fortune, expressed lately by sudden leaps up to the mantle and little fantasies of chase up stairs and over couches
Why is it that we need to leave our mark? Painted in caves, spray painted on derelict walls and overpasses…what?
Our pain, our love,
excreted, scrawled.
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