SITTING WITH THE SICK CAT

 

We are up early, neither of us having rested

much during the night -- up and down

like sleepwalkers -- the neighbors yet to stir,

the first sunrise of autumn yet to break through

the chill-dark distance of the window.

The weather channel on the television plays

softly some French music from another century,

while I glance occasionally at the shifting patterns

of colors and light on the screen, the familiar

outlines of our state, country, then world,

then only the endless turn of borderless sky.

My daughter sleeps, safe and sound,

in the next room, growing taller and stronger

by the hour. But this small creature, having become

the center of her young life, struggles

to find the simplest comfort, circling my lap,

purring, wheezing, nodding off, letting

out a throaty exclamation that is part pain,

part surprise at the very insistence of it.

For the moment, this is our entire universe,

the hum and hush of it, the secrets

and complexities of its motion, the hot

pinpricks of starlight that pierce through flesh,

our common desire to understand.

There is not much I can do beyond this,

a feeling that as a father I am long familiar with,

but stubbornly refuse to get used to.

Our weariness is our common song this morning,

our breathing a shared language welcoming --

or at least acknowledging -- whatever

this uncertain day may bring.

THE LAST SUPPER

 

When Aunt Anita got word from the clinic

that the cancer was fanning outward

like a web of newly shattered glass,

and that it was, in fact, inoperable, she promptly

planned a get together for family and friends,

an informal wake that she would attend,

and which she dubbed -- not without a touch

of gallows humor -- her last supper.

She arrived in a ball gown, sequined and sparkling,

her long dark hair newly styled, flitting

from table to table, bar stool to bar stool,

glasses raised and clinking, remembering both

the good times and the hard times with

those she knew -- and she knew nearly everyone.

She was their confidante, keeper of their

stories, their sorrows, and secrets.

The next morning she slipped quietly into

a coma, one long dream receding into

another, never again to wake.

Born into nothing, into a town so insignificant

that no one had bothered to name it,

she left this world, nonetheless, dressed to the nines,

a benevolent ruler with a Louisville slugger

tucked behind the bar, just in case.

She left, quite simply, glowing.

DEMONS

 

In my mother's view of the world,

a world long since passed

into memory and family lore, nearly every

affliction of the body, psyche, or soul

could be ascribed to demons.

There was the demon of alcohol, persistent

and familiar as the setting sun, the demon of lust,

the demon that caused epilepsy, and

my stammering lisp as a child.

Demons were, it seemed, everywhere --

in constant need of being cast out, sometimes

forcefully, in the sanctum of the church,

and in our humble living rooms,

the preacher gone red-faced with intent,

his voice commanding, one tiny river

of sweat trickling down his cheek.

My mother said, more than once, that my father

must have been possessed by demons

which had caused him to gamble and drink,

to womanize, and abandon his children,

running like a fugitive from one end

of the country to the other, and back again.

She didn't mean it metaphorically.

She meant, I think, that no man could

possibly be purely evil without

some assistance, that there must be

an unseen hand holding the map,

guiding, relentlessly turning his back to the world,

and sweeping clean his tracks

until the man himself, however upright he

had begun, could no longer be seen.

ILLNESS DURING CHILDHOOD

 

When my daughter becomes sick with fever,

unable to keep even water down, I am taken back

suddenly to those terrible illnesses of childhood,

gathering like storms on the horizons of

our brows, all of us, heat blazing through temples

east and west. I remember the holy eucharist

of saltines and warm 7-Up, the pinpricks of pleurisy

through lungs gone weary with coughing,

throat scraped raw, red one day, spotted white

the next, giving up the ghost of speech;

remember, too, the little brown bottles of Robitussin,

the mountains of knotted tissue hardening,

the smell of sickness seeping into everything.

I am reminded of how we learned to walk

through sleep, as we had in waking life, pushing

hard in our delirium against heavy furniture

as though ships stubbornly clinging to shore,

while visions of saints and ancestors floated patiently

past our doors and windows, visitors which no one

would have believed had we mentioned them.

I remember how we became somehow weightless

and immovable at once, sleeping so hard

that no dream could have roused us, our limbs

growing limp and longer through the night,

reaching out for that mythical land of sunlight

and well being, until one morning we did

awake, bright eyed once more upon a shore

of cool linoleum, our bodies new and uncertain,

flat feet plodding from one room to the next,

so thirsty that we could have drank the rain clouds dry.