Here it is once again this one note
from a string of longing
…
the same note goes on calling
across space and is heard
in the old night and known there
a silence recognized
by the silence it calls to – W.S. Merwin (from Calling A Distant Animal)
I felt this day coming at me from a long time ago. Why, I don’t know. I felt an anxiety, a heightened anticipation, a little like some forthcoming important finals.
And then when we returned last night from our Canadian vacation, I realized that coming back from a vacation to an empty home was still an alien feeling. Its been three years to the day, sweet Kitty, that we’ve returned to the house of no you. The anxiety was my body trying to cope with this fact. And today, I was randomly turning the pages of Merwin’s collection of luminous verse, “The Shadow of Sirius” when the poem sprang at me. Reminding me. Of that note of longing, for a glimpse of orange fur, for the smell of cat lick and bath scent that was uniquely yours, for the feel of your soft fur, the sweet sound of your meow and the purr that reminded me that I was home.
The third year of no you has been a far better one than the previous two. Hardly a day has gone by when I haven’t thought of you, you walking flea condo, but I’ve mostly thought of you with a smile on my face, not the tears that were the hallmark of the two years before. If the smile suddenly turned wistful, it was because I remembered my now unrequited dream of Maya knowing you and you knowing her.
When I ask Shanthala what she wants to say on this day, she just cries. I still miss him so, she whispers.
Friends ask me if we’ll let another cat adopt us. I say I don’t know. I still haven’t gotten past that.
Now you are darker than I can believe
it is not wisdom that I have come to
with its denials and pure promises
but this absence that I cannot set down – W.S. Merwin (from Night with No Moon)
Some nights, when I’m holding Maya, my hands remember the way you curled next to me, adjusting them till you were content. Some nights, when I hear her sigh in her sleep, my ears recall the way you sighed, your purr stopping just before you feel asleep. And when she calls to me at midnight, when I’m away from her, I’m haunted by the memory of how you came seeking me, meowing your unhappiness at my not being in bed at that late hour.
But where I was bereft, I’m now more grateful for our times together. I loved you so much, I love you as much even now. If there is one thing that we the living, can ask of absent friends like you, it is this.
o closest to my breath
if you are able to
please wait a little longer
on that side of the cloud – W.S. Merwin (from Into the Cloud)
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