On Puer Wounds and Cats

For days now the brilliant rind of summer has been unbroken by clouds, temps in the mid-90s, a bleary shear to the light, sharp and oppressive. We do not so much drive and work in this heat as tumble down its leagues in a stunned sprawl. A heat like this has an eternal calibration though we do not, outlasting the wilted pentas in the garden by only an hour or two.

My wife had already gone to bed (succumbing to PM Tylenols after getting hammered but good by a heat headache) and darkness had settled on garden and house when the thunder, hard and crisp and dangerous-sounding, began trooping around the city, and rain began to fall first the most random spicules on our tin roof and then in a rising wet crescendo, watering all at last. The thunder was wicked, sharply consonant with that snakelike snap cracking wide the basso registers, oomphs of sound pounding the firmament and rolling like dancing boulders across the night.

My wife appeared in the kitchen, worried about the danger of lightning upstairs; but I said it would be OK and was heading up myself. Turned off all the lights and kneeled to give thanks for another day sober & alive & in the midst of such a feral summer & grateful for marriage and blessing, quite late, of hard rains. Trudged upstairs, sore of shoulder, weary, long past young, the stairs creaking from my weight. No sign of our cat Violet, who usually curls at my wife's feet; the thunder had chased her in terror under our bed where she will surely cower long after the last fading rumble of storm. Got in bed next to my wife and gently stroked the long curve of her hip as she slept on her side, slowly releasing into the darker deeper augments of that rain, the brilliant white exclamation points on my eyelids and the cannonade which followed like speedbumps on my yield to sleep.

And what is it, to drowse under the canopy of such rain and pent pealing ferocity? Blessed by augments which arouse only from such heat? This morning's reading from the Tao Te Ching suggests how closely harm and boon are infolded, like petals of the same bloom:

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.

Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.

(#2, transl. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English)

***

This dark hour is especially thick after hard rains, the garden sated, tree-frogs croaking in the back yard, crickets saturated in their drone. A cat in the driveway, issuing a vague complaint, an offhand sort of meow, distracted perhaps, or pained.

I've been thinking and writing of the wounded heel, the love-line of the palm which pierces the heavenward trajectory of the life-line; the fool for love incandescent in his dreams of perfected union, nailed by passion back into this world & all of its imperfect, broken, bleeding, sad, bittersweet unions. How laming to come to know love as it is, bereft of the feathery naiads with big blue aurulae, a daily toil of many years' making, all labors "forgotten," in the way of the I Ching, as mortar and tenon is forgotten in the building of a house. How difficult to let old fantasies die, release them from the iron grip of need, allowing mortal women their mortality, and thus accepting the man reflect in their eyes as of a far softer, subtler fire than gods and suns combust.

What does Christ utter on the cross which rooted him to earth but consummatum est, "it is finished," words which have two faces, in the way that "front and back follow each other,': death of the rootless divine on the world tree, death of the lover who expires in his true love's arms only to wake to a world only now free to begin. Entering time.

When the grip of those crucified hands relaxed, what did they accept? "That same wounded palm opens the soul of the hand, making it excruciatingly aware of giving and receiving. Soul is the dealer, anima mercurialis, the anima mundi as interchange among participating souls, community. Swift-footed boy, mimetic to Hermes, hitherto all cap and phallus, God of exchanges and commerce ... may now experience by means of his hurt that what actually passes through his hands are values." (Hillman, "Puer Wounds and Ulysses' Scar")

So the woundedness -- sore shoulder, aggrieved heart, weariness of the hour, the day, zeitgeist -- the wounds are eyes allowing stereoscoping views of soul and spirit, I and Thou together at work, history in bed with mystery, deep utterance wed to the carnal efflorescence of the next day. What would I know at all, without the grief? Why would I endure it, without the love?




VIOLET

2002

Violet curls on the back
of the sofa across from
me -- her face now
tight after the pleasures
of A Treat, Open Window
and a Game of Ribbon
laying on the floor
next to me -- One paw
out now, stretching
in her pleasure, which
is indecipherable to me
except in the sweet
poise it suggests,
a languor running
like exhausted wavelets
along a shore which
has piss and shit in it,
tooth and claw too,
and a million petty
griefs -- one of us
approaching, the other
shying away, not what
we hoped for, but
enough of what we need
to keep us coming back
to those small moments
of joy. Like last night
as my wife and I sat
watching a movie --
she in her chair,
me on the couch --
and violet, resting
on the back of the
couch just over my
shoulder, facing out
the window open to the
early night, let a rear
leg drift down and
touch my shoulder,
her paw holding on
as I to her in
that moment like
clear water, a cup
so much of the
rest of life could
never quite hold.



BUSTER

April 2001

After we said farewell to Buster
at the vet, stroking his head
softly as the anaesthetic
slowly closed his eyes,
releasing the struggle
at last: After driving in to
work crying all the way,
both windows rolled down,
the warm wind no solace,
the light too bright: After
trudging through the duties
of work feeling numb and empty:
After coming home and
crying hard with my wife
remembering all the ways
Buster had been
such a prince in life, so
handsome and willful
and expressive: After
we both said how much
we loved and missed him
and couldn't believe
he was gone:
After all that I sat out
on the upper deck to
take comfort in the
remains of the day:
A moist and fragrant
breeze worked the camphor
tree by the garage, hurling
those wide green boughs
in spring's fragile ache and joy:
I leaned back and closed
my eyes, weary from so
much sharp hurt, finding
for a moment the peace
that grief brings, as if great
losses make what remains
so tender and real: I exhaled
slowly into that loveliness,
and then the strangest
thing happened: With my
eyes closed I saw Buster
laying right at my feet,
the breeze ruffling his pale
white fur, his tail slowly
swishing to and fro,
his tiny nose sniffing the breeze,
his clear blue eyes lifting
back up at me, at you,
happy to be forever
right beside we who remain,
we who remember, we who
will always have a space for him
between memory and this living day.




CAT IN THE BOX

2002

We don't know why, but our cat
loves her loving in a box.
We set one on the floor
and she hops right in,
deigning to be lifted to
our bed as if on a ski-lift
and then demurring to long strokes,
her sapphire eyes misting,
milky, culled in kittenlike
memories of long ago..
Normally she can't stand to
be held, but with only a
box between us she'll take
all the love we can give.
I guess sometimes love
requires an inch of buffer,
a frontier absence making
not enough more than.
A beach between sea and
continent brocaded the sure caress.




PINK

May 2003-March 3, 2005


Yesterday we put Pink down, her
liver failing, the feline leukemia
she was born with ending things
in a whirl. As my wife and I talked
and cried last night in bed, it was hard
to see the sense in her short life,
one of a starving brood that showed
up in our back yard a few summers back
so scrawny and malnourished,
Mamacita moving them about to
keep them safe from predators (the
night she moved them to our yard
we heard the worst yowling sound,
we figuring she was fending something
off), her tail and hindquarters bare
from allergies to fleas, thin and bugeyed
with desperation, her four kittens
blithely romping in the grass. We
started feeding them -- providing
alternation with Mamacita's sore paps --
and then lured them into the guest
bedroom which opens onto our porch
and kept them there until we could
get them checked & nurtured by
our vet. Pink , her flounce-haired
brother Red and grey/white Cookie
all tested positive for feline leukemia
(but oddly not Mama or their brother
Blue), and we were told to keep them
for a month more inside
to see if they would develop the immunity
to the disease. Those weeks that guest
room was a constant thrash of frolic
amid endless care, Red and Blue and
Pink and Cookie dashing everywhere,
ripping up the veneer on the dresser,
clawing at the woodwork in their play.
One Sunday morning I went in to feed
them and found Cookie gasping in
a huge puddle of blood that had vomited
from her chest - the emergency vet
that postmortemed her couldn't say
what happened for sure, perhaps she'd
ruptured something falling off the bed.
Mamacita became more wary and
ansy, protective of her kits but weary
of their incessant greed for her. Slowly
biology took over and she began to push
her kits away, smacking and them and
hissing when they rounded close for love.
When Pink and Red tested positive again
we knew they could never come inside,
and since they've all been homebound
strays, feeding at our back porch, caught
and brought inside when they each got
fixed and later when the would get sick.
We spent over a thousand bucks just
getting them set up to be safe and well
enough strays. Pink was such a sweet-
faced tabby, her black stripes thick
and ropy; she was eager to hunt birds
and moles and lizards, growing so big
on Nine Lives and wild gizzards that
we called for a time Fat Pink. She'd take
her morning respite up on the tin roof
of our neighbor Dan's garage, sleeping
there til the sun rose over the oaks,
free of male harassment, queen of that
domain. Then something happened
between her and Red, he started chasing
her away, and she became furtive and
nervous, showing up to eat only when Red
was elsewhere, jumpy as she ate. She was
also sickly, suffering two or three
yeast infections and a parasital bug
that wiped her out for a week (perhaps
it was a stage of the leukemia). She got
so frightened that my wife brought her
in to rest a spell, and Pink for those
few days just loved the splendor and
warmth and security, sleeping on the
bed with her head against the pillow
like Sheba, purring long and kneading
her paws into the sheet as we stroked
her, her eyes veiled in her delight.
But the feral itch would get back into
her and she couldn't stay inside, she
had to go back out, even though all
that seemed a worse imprisonment to
fright and deprivation. We think she
stayed most of the time by an empty
house across the street, seeing her
cross the street that way always after
she had eaten. Since Christmas she'd
been slowly losing weight, no longer
Fat Pink but this lonely starveling
who ate on the run and would hardly
come close to be petted (fearing, we
guessed, being brought back inside).
This week she lost all appetite and
on Wednesday my wife followed her
around the yard until Pink just lay
down and my wife picked her up
and brought her inside. She tried
giving her Baytril and feed her W/D
cat food mixed with water through
a syringe but Pink hardly had any
of it, drinking up lots of water,
pissing heavily in the litter box
and throwing up and getting weak
and weaker. It was cold and rainy
yesterday when my wife took Pink
to the vet -- an awful wintry front,
cold air down from the north mixing
boggily with humid air off
the Gulf, the chill invading from
the day into every marrow. We
had talked about her illness that
morning and what we could afford
to help with, deciding that if there
were sure enough signs that the
leukemia was taking her, we'd have
her put to sleep. The vet saw jaundice
everywhere and noted how swollen
her liver was. A biopsy was needed
to be sure, but when my wife
agonized out loud about whether
she should have Pink put down
without incurring that cost,
the vet in his mercy said
he would do the same if it was
his cat. (And he we know has
many). So he gave Pink a shot
of sedative and left the examining
room, leaving my wife and Pink
to say goodbye. My wife said it
was a long time before they came
back and Pink went very slowly
into her last sleep, purring deep
as she stroked her, wrapping a paw
around my wife's arm, pulling
her close. My wife didn't think
it would be so hard, holding her there,
feeling Pink's naked trust in her love,
the only security in her bum life
the one which led her out of it.
My wife said she steeled herself
knowing there wasn't much good
left for Pink in life -- the illness
marching fast, her feral need to be
outside pointing her to dying
out in the cold and rain with no
home. So my wife just cooed Pink's
name and stroked her long and slow
until Pink fell asleep, holding her
there a few minutes more til the
vet came back in to administer the
shot, letting my wife go. "She had
a bad lot in this life," my wife cried
as we lay beneath the heavy covers
of our bed last night, rain still falling
coldly on the roof, our indoor cat
Violet sleeping between my legs. "They
got all the love and care the situation
allowed," I told her, stroking her arm,
remembering how I went into the
guest room before leaving for work that
day to check on Pink. Her eyes were
listless and her body so thin, and yet
she purred in that greedy way she
once nursed, my hand moving soft and
slow down her jungle-wild contour,
whispering with all my heart Pink, Pink
Pink, It's OK. Her purrs believed me
as deep as biology. So I'm crying now
as I write, as I remember her stray,
indifferent life which flourished only
in part so short a while. Her life meant
nothing to the world -- little even to
her own brood. Our love for her was so
bounded and finite and futile, caring for
her only as we were allowed and could
afford, giving our hearts to her when she
got sick, stroking her whenever we could,
and letting her decide how much
of us she wanted. Pink was a fast and
cruel hunter, better than her brothers
at shooting across the yard in a bolt
of white desire to nail a fleeing squirrel --
so cruel, so triumphant -- and yet you
should hear her cry and cry for food
at our back door, loud and mournful as
one who'd hadn't eaten for days. When
I opened the door to go out to feed her,
she'd press her body against my
foot as I shooshed her. That contact
between wild cruel sad world and all
the love we can pour into it
is what I end with here. Pink's life
was too short and sad but she
was dearly loved, and her poem
is the only one worth writing
on the first day on earth without her.
Cold and rainy still, Red and
Blue in the boxes on the back
porch we've stuffed with towels
to help them stay warm, hungry
as ever for their next big bowls of food,
both sisters now dead, another day
to hunt and purr and sleep away.




CAT IN THE WINDOW
2002

Serene and calm,
our cat sits at an
opened window next
to the screen,
soaking up the morning
which softly hums
and pulses with all
she cannot reach
yet still savors.
It is never easier
than this, lingering
at the simplest threshold,
ears cocked to
this day's immense
stillness.

And when she
has soaked her
ears to the brim
she settles,
extending one
paw forward
and stills.