AT OUR LEFT THE ELF

Cats ... can't kill them, can't always live with them. I never want to kill cats, really, or have any of them ever die, even the ones I don't know about. However and that said, it is a bit of a trial to get some of them into the house in the later evening when their nocturnal silliness kicks in. Butterscotch is happily ensconced behind me in the work/guest room that I have started cleaning up (it's not that bad really). Ariel and Vera Paris are happily asleep in the here-and-there ... but as for Emmylou Irene Patsy Clownpaws and Oona Minnie Pearl Moonlight, well, there are of a more savage sort and they like their outside nighttime prowl. Also, they like me to chase them around the streets, calling in a mournful way.

Again, taking care of the aging is not an easy task. The short term memory loss is staggering. The most mundane facts or issues must be addressed anew again and again.

Next morning.

I had to give that up and go to bed. Janet is unnaturally concerned about Oona all the time. Oona is addicted to me. And here I sat, thinking and writing, when an braying began at the front door. Janet was on the other side of the house calling for me to help her get the damn cats. Very most obnoxious. She does this all the time. She always derails my trains of thinking.

And then, as a reasonable bedtime approaches, I am out in the front yard and down the street, trying to lure Oona close enough so that I can catch her and get her into the house. She thinks it is one of our games. I lie down in the driveway as if I am sleeping or dead to see if I can lull her into an interested proximity where I can grab her.

I was too pissed off at her to let Oona sleep on my pillow.

Now I can see her having a late morning nap in the garden beneath the yellow grape tomatoes and a very large lemongrass plant. As I think of it, I was not sure that particular plant was going to make it. It's huge now. there is a pool of white there. She looks like the last patch of unmelted snow.

For some reason, Bette Midler's version of Hello In There was wafting through my head this morning. I remember listening to it repeatedly as a college freshman with Kim, Laurie, and EJB. Now, when it is more about me, it feels devastatingly sad. Stop and listen if you have the time. Here. Beautiful piano by Dick Hyman. (No, I did not make up that name. He's an old school New York session musician.)

Maybe if I listened to this daily, I might be more patient with my mother. Who know, maybe even with myself.

As the weather is clement enough for moving around, I should make hay while the sun doesn't shine too warmly.

THE TEST WE SET OURSELF

An honest work generates its own power; a dishonest work tries to rob power from the cataracts of the given. — Annie Dillard

If we could bless human,
if we could stand out of the range
of the cataracts of the given,
and not find our pockets swollen
with change we haven't—but must have—
stolen, who wouldn't.
It isn't a gift; we are beholden
to the sources we crib—
always something's overflow,
or someone's rib hidden in our breast;
the answer sewn inside up
that invalidates the test we set ourself
against the boneless angel at our right
and at our left the elf.

— Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, New York, Grove Press, 2010