Little Friend

Friendly little fellow

Is it that I feed and pet you

That you nip and paw at me

And tell me in your quiet little cat ways

What you want me to do for you

You stalk the rooms on your nightly vigil

And find a place to sit

On top of my chest

Beautiful little cat

Purring delightedly

At my soft attentions

As the sun gleams

Warmly through the windows

This is your day

To explore, to love

To eat and sleep

To play and paw

Silently you express your love

As you lead me to the door

This day will be a short one

And tomorrow will soon come

And all that was will then be gone

The pleasure of your company today

Is worth more than the tears

Of tomorrow

Yesterday is gone away

And will never come again

This last year

Will never return to us again

All that remain

Memories and leftover bits and pieces

Of empty and half-forgotten dreams

What seemed important yesteryear

Now seems only irrelevant

Once you were a part of the world

And now you are no more

Than a recurring dream, a set of memories

A permanent hole in my heart

You left behind

An irreparable tear

In the fabric of my life

An amputated soul

And a ghost shadow that lurks

In forgotten corners and hidden spaces

A marble marker set in seldom visited ground

And soon, a day will come

When we will no longer be a part of the world

And it will be as before we were born

The world will carry on as it may

Spinning on its axis

The sun rising and setting on its daily rounds

The cycle of seasons following one upon another

A round of holiday rituals observed

The end of the road

Is the same for everyone

Reached each by their own route

Some winding, others staight

Some short and others long

Some bumpy and others smooth

Some travel their ways

In luxury and comfort

And others much walk

On the hot souls of calloused feet

But it matters not the way they came

I missed you during the holidays

And your birthday came and went

Without a mention of your name

The few things of yours remain

And a lost picture of you

Between the pages

Of one of your old books

The silence and peace within which we dwell

Becomes your memory and our devotion

But the day does not dawn

Nor the sun set

When you are not a part of our abode

And fail to walk in our shadows

And haunt our private spaces

Dare we mention you again

Or chance to recall great emptiness

You left behind

It only matters that

The end is one and the same

Arriving unseen and unexpected

Some call it fate

Others perhaps destiny

I call it simply

The way of life

Now I sit alone

In the darkness of my shadows

Waiting for the sun

To stream through the windows

And warm my bones

Then you were full of hope and possibility

Silently shared expectations in our little world

You were a sense of bittersweet finality

And I a part of your fold

Now you dwell apart

In some distant land

Our bygone world but a memory departed

Of a world never to return

Then I did not see

The need to return the small affections

To have the courage to venture out

To risk the lost and hurt

Lost

Between the lines of this verse

Between the pages of this book

Between the nooks and crannies of this room

Between the days and nights of my existence

Between then and now, here and there

Between the sunrises and sunsets of this land

Somewhere between the sea and the land

Between the horizon and the sky

Between the episodes and periods of my experience

Between the hands and arms of my many relations

Between the uniforms and costumes and dress of the world

Between the boundaries and borders of this nation and that

Between the realms of different ethnocultures

Lost is the spirit and soul of life

The sense of meaning

Sense of logic and hope

Sense of destiny and expectation

Wishes and goals

Different worlds

Make all the difference

And it is the world

That makes the critical difference

Between you and I

And all the other people

More or less the same

We are except that we are shaped by our

We

dwell in worlds

So completely different

And it becomes a fatal error

To use the terms and reference points

From one world

And to superimpose them upon another

It is a destructive act of power

Seasons

Odd Ends: Perennial Poesy along the Way

2005