Elegy for the Cat

Remembering the swat of the claw from under the blanket --
only seeing movement, never accepting consequences.
The basket on the dryer filled with a blob of black fur
or driving up to the house and seeing him stretched out
in the kitchen window, completely unsuprised
at the abundance and viciousness outside waiting for him.

I just heard today, as I was away starting in a meeting,
from the vet who said you had collapsed and was on a ventilator.
You, who had never wanted for anything, waiting to be free,
who had sailed with me from the beginning to the end,
wanting nothing more than my care, endlessly,
without thinking, butting your head against my leg;
without care for the future and its tubes and its cages.
And now this, without thinking of this end --
away from me, not next to me, abandoned to the world.

I feel so foolish:
tears and heartbreak and loss;
mapping onto you the larger losses
of which you had no knowledge,
no hope or frustration,
just you waiting for me.

Now, letting go, letting the past remain in the past,
curled and sleeping and the long purring sigh,
instead of hanging on, making it worse and worse,
moving further and further away from what we believed
would last forever and its routine and its comfort --
moving forward and letting the becoming be the becoming.

Instead, choosing to be lifted, in your passing,
into the new world, letting the past remain the past
-- what has happened, what has been done -- and to never
be suprised again at what can be taken away,
or what can be given and, from your graceful example,
accepted, as each day is given to us, one at a time.