from 2007
This ravine, still green and furious with foliage, is a kind
of gap, its thirty-three descending wooden steps obscured by ferns and moss in
October’s unseasonable heat. At the bottom, in the trough near the grotto where
I stood with the spiderweb last month and played with light, I once buried my
cat Tess, a gray and orange tortoiseshell who loved my mother. I wrapped her in
a thinning ancient towel, white with marigolds across it, a brightness I saw
the next morning from my deck, knowing I’d made the grave in that hard dark
earth too shallow. That unearthing, however it happened, seemed to me then a
kind of seamless holy thing, like Annie Dillard’s bloody tom, distributing gore
across her waking body at dawn, his compact hunter’s form a tawny stamp of
fecundity, much like the flare of vivid yellow I saw in the forest that morning:
a flag, brash and empty.
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Hi, just a moment back I was searching for the information on the same topic Photographs and pictures of sun
ReplyDeleteThis is so sad. (Love the Annie Dillard reference). I buried my 20 year old cat in a sealed plastic bin...I couldn't bear the thought of anything hurting him. Crazy, I know. A beautiful write and photo, Laura. xo
ReplyDeletethank you. sadly, September before last I went away for a week, leaving my cats in the care of a friend, and when I returned the 17 year old brother of the cat in this poem was gone. I was heartbroken. at least I got some closure with Tess. thank you for your kind remarks. I understand about the sealed plastic bin, even though my take on Tess' burial was kind of the opposite.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I remember each place my hunting dogs were buried under they favorite place to lay and rest in the heat of the day. Special places and fond memories....:)
ReplyDeleteThank you. : )
ReplyDelete